Gary Roach <gary719_li...@verizon.net> writes: > I have been trying to set up a python, django, mysql, > virtualenvwrapper and git development project and am really confused.
(Side note: If you have the option, avoid MySQL and begin with PostgreSQL. It is much more standards-compliant, and avoids many of the misfeatures and never-fixed bugs in MySQL that will cause you great grief.) > All of the documentation seems to ignore the apt-get installation > methods used by Debian Linux and its derivatives. Do you mean the Django documentation? > Does pip install the same as apt-get; I don't think so. If I use > virtualenvwrapper, how does this fit with the normal debian (wheezy) > installation. You're right, it doesn't. Pip is one step on a long, incomplete progress of the Python community's attempt to implement dependency-based package management. It lacks many of the useful features you've come to expect from modern operating system package managers. Not least: if your project has any dependencies other than Python packages, pip cannot help you since it is tied to Python's Distutils. > I also need git which just confuses the situation even more. Must I > give up the automatic updating system that Debian provides when > setting up the development environment? No, you can develop your project on the assumption that APT is available and that particular repositories will be used. Then you are bound to only depend on those packages available from those repositories. There is a huge range of Python packages, Django-specific packages, and of course non-Python packages, in Debian. So you may find that this will work fine for you. But be aware that (unfortunately, in my view) many Python developers do not want to wait for libraries to be quality-tested in an operating system's ecosystem; they want to grab each one as soon as it's available and immediately depend on the latest version. It is for this desire that installing directly from PyPI is implemented. And for this, you do indeed abandon the operating system's package management and all the benefits it brings. > The documentation centers on Windoz, Mac and generic Linux > distributions and ignores the automation of the Debian installation. Yes. Python (and Django) are designed for a range of operating systems, on some of which package dependency management is nonexistent (MS Windows) or atrocious (OS/X). Dependency-based package management is a mature technology with implementations that avoid many of the problems in pip, but pip serves a real need: bringing some measure of dependency-based package management to at least Python libraries, in operating systems that lack anything better. > Any help with straightening out my brain in this area will be > sincerely appreciated. If you're fortunate enough to be developing on a modern operating system with dependency-based package management and a rich repository of OS packages, like Debian, then you can develop software as for anything else where the packages are available in the OS: ignore pip, and package your software to depend on other operating system packages. The Python and Django documentation aren't going to be of much help there, since they don't try to teach people to package their software to work with the rest of the operating system (instead advising developers to pretend the rest of the operating system doesn't exist, insulating the developer's software in a virtualenv). So you'll need to learn how to package software for Debian yourself. -- \ "Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are | `\ fools, and those who dare not, are slaves." —“Lord” George | _o__) Gordon Noel Byron | Ben Finney -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
