[Pythonmac-SIG] Minimal Python 2.5 and Django install

[Ned Deily]

In article <DA7FFF72-17AA-4525-8219-B42830412D5C at innotts.co.uk>,
 Dave Everitt <deveritt at innotts.co.uk> wrote:
> After earlier failed attempts to get Django up and running (see:  
> 'Macports and Django install problems') I started again and wrote an  
> 'absurdly simple' OS X 10.4 Django install guide here:
> 
> http://ecoconsulting.co.uk/training/python/python-django-OSX.shtml
> 
> It avoids Macports or Subversion and is intended for anyone (like me)  
> who just wants to try out Django and complete the tutorials without  
> doing any serious development yet.

A few more comments after trying things on a vanilla 10.4.10 system.

One, now that the recipe doesn't use MacPorts, installing the Apple 
Developer Tools (Xcode) isn't needed.  They would only be needed to 
build any C extensions and Django doesn't appear to have any.

Two, one's mileage may vary of course but I think it's much easier to 
use the power of easy_install in setuptools.  So step 3 could be 
replaced by:

  [if easy_install not already available:}
  curl http://peak.telecommunity.com/dist/ez_setup.py -O
  python ez_setup.py

  easy_install http://www.djangoproject.com/download/0.96/tarball/

That's it: you're now ready for the tutorials.

{Note, in theory one should be able to just type something like:
     easy_install Django096
 and setuptools will search the Python Package Index for the latest 
Django download.  Unfortunately, the PyPi entry for Django doesn't seem 
to work with easy_install at the moment, hence the lengthier URL version 
above.]

In the spirit of keeping things "absurdly simple", wth the above recipe 
there is no need to worry about the Django admin script not being 
executable, so you can safely remove the directions for the chmod.  And 
the django-admin.py script is installed into the 
/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/Current/bin directory 
which the Python 2.5.1 installer automatically adds to one's path so the 
directions to manually manipulate the PATH variable aren't needed, 
either.  And there's no need to test for SQLite.  It's just there in 
2.5.1.

Finally, I'd limit the References to just the first www.python.org mac 
link.  The others and more are referenced from there (and the one link 
isn't really relevant to current OSX stuff anyway).

Thanks again for doing this.

-- 
 Ned Deily,
 nad at acm.org