startforum: where to deploy?

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After two days of hell I managed to install Python 2.6 on CentOS, along with all the Askbot dependencies (I think).

I cloned the github repo into /var/www/html/askantimoon (askantimoon is my git project name). Most of the Askbot files are now in /var/www/html/askantimoon/askbot. Is it a good idea to put my repo in a directory which contains Web-accessible files?

I ran python2.6 setup.py develop and created the MySQL database. Now it seems I have to run another setup script called startforum (why? I already ran setup.py).

When I run startforum, it asks me "where to deploy (in which directory?)". What does that mean? I thought Askbot was already in /var/www/site/askantimoon. And what is a good directory to choose here?

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Tomasz P. Szynalski

asked 2011-06-20 12:20:10 -0500

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Centos in tougher, because you have to compile a few system dependencies. Ubuntu is much easier to work with.

Evgeny (2011-06-20 12:22:27 -0500) edit

Btw, highly recommend postgresql, you will get much better text search support and transaction management in the database. Well worth the effort.

Evgeny (2011-06-20 12:33:25 -0500) edit

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startforum script creates the django site - it is a deployment script, while setup.py installs the python modules where they belong on the python system tree.

In that case - if your current directory is /var/www/site/askantimoon, answer with "." (a dot - current directory). There may be an error message, ignore it.

The question "where to deploy" means - where on the file system to install the django site.

After startforum runs, you will get settings.py, urls.py, etc. - files necessary for the Django site.

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Evgeny

updated 2011-06-20 12:27:30 -0500, answered 2011-06-20 12:25:43 -0500

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Please clarify "creates the django site". I thought the django models, views, etc. were already in the askbot directory of the project. What will happen if I pull the latest changes from your dev repo? Do I need to "re-deploy" the site with startforum so that the changes are applied to my site?

Tomasz P. Szynalski (2011-06-20 15:27:24 -0500) edit

Also, if I deploy into my git project dir, won't that confuse git? Should the deployed files be tracked by git in my branch? If not, perhaps a separate dir would be better?

Tomasz P. Szynalski (2011-06-20 15:31:13 -0500) edit

Tomasz, git won't be confused all added files are in .gitignore, but you can change that too - since your cloned repo is your local.

Evgeny (2011-06-20 15:57:56 -0500) edit

Thanks. I assume startforum adds these files to .gitignore. How about my first question about updating the project? How do I update the deployed files -- urls.py, settings.py, etc.??

Tomasz P. Szynalski (2011-06-20 16:08:21 -0500) edit

Good question. If anything changes in settings.py and urls.py - those have to be done manually, usually only one line at a time. Not all updates require it, urls.py changes very rarely, but settings.py - more often, __init__.py and manage.py never change.

Evgeny (2011-06-20 16:13:20 -0500) edit

I assume most people use Askbot as a standalone app, not a Django module. Therefore, wouldn't it be better to include settings.py, urls.py, etc. in the git project so people can easily pull changes to these files from the dev repo? It seems like a major pain to have to check these files every time I do 'git pull'. (And there's no way to know which files changed.) You can add these files to .gitignore only if the user specifies explicitly (in startforum?) that they want to use Askbot as a Django module.

Tomasz P. Szynalski (2011-06-21 15:37:59 -0500) edit

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startforum: where to deploy?