Recommended Laptop Preparations for Sprinting

To save time at the Saturday sprinting sessions, please try to prepare your laptop before arrival with the following features:

• a working network interface, either wired or wireless,
• Python 2.3 or 2.4 (preferred),
• the Subversion client for accessing the club repository,
• a plain text editor, not word processor, of your choice,
• basic familiarity with use of a command-prompt

Also useful would be:

• the PostgreSQL client for accessing the club SQL database,
• the graphical library wxPython for building GUI applications in Python,
• an interactive Python interpreter command shell, such as Py or DrPython

To experiment with web operations using Twisted:

• the Twisted framework [TwistedInstallInstructions]
• the Nevow web add-on to Twisted.
• the SimpleTAL web templating language

http://www.owlfish.com/software/simpleTAL/downloads/SimpleTAL-3.12.tar.gz?

To experiment with SQL databases using PostgreSQL:

• the PostgreSQL client
• the PostgreSQL server
• the PsycoPG adapter for Python access to PostgreSQL

[[PostgresSQL Download | ftp://ftp24.us.postgresql.org/postgresql/source/v8.0.3/postgresql-8.0.3.tar.bz2]]

Long step by step version:

NOTE: If under Linux you are installing into the Python system directories, you may need to preface the "python setup.py install" command with sudo each time you run it.

*TO BEGIN, GET TWISTED*

Download TwistedSumo?: http://tmrc.mit.edu/mirror/twisted/Twisted/2.0/TwistedSumo-2005-05-25.tar.bz2

To uncompress the file, use bunzip:

    bunzip2 TwistedSumo?-2005-05-25.tar.bz2

The resulting file will be TwistedSumo?-2005-05-25.tar. To untar it:

    tar -xvf TwistedSumo?-2005-05-25.tar

Next, change into the resulting directory:

    cd TwistedSumo?-2005-05-25

Use the 'ls' command to view the contents. Notice that it contains a setup.py, which is the standard name for Python installer scripts. However, before we run setup.py, notice also the presence of ZopeInterface?-3.0.1.tgz. We need to install that first because Twisted depends on it. So, the next step is:

If you already had Twisted installed, then you should add three packages that TwistedSumo? already had packaged with Twisted. They are:

• TwistedWeb? http://twistedmatrix.com/projects/web/
• Twisted-Enterprise http://twistedmatrix.com/products/enterprise
• ZopeInterface? http://www.zope.org/Products/ZopeInterface

*INSTALL ZOPE INTERFACE*

Unarchive:

    tar -zxvf ZopeInterface?-3.0.1.tgz

Next, change into the resulting directory:

    cd ZopeInterface?-3.0.1

Type 'ls' and notice the presence of a setup.py file. We'll use this to build and install ZopeInterface?. Run these two commands.

  python setup.py build
  python setup.py install

(I don't know why the additional step of running build is necessary, while most other libraries just require running "setup.py install".)

NOTE: I ran into some problems building ZopeInterface? on Mac OS X Tiger. The workaround was to type this command: sudo gcc_select 3.3. Presumably, this changed the gcc compiler to the same version used to build Python on Mac OS X.

*INSTALL TWISTED*

By now, we have already unarchived TwistedSumo?, and if you're following these instructions sequentially, the TwistedSumo? directory is the parent to the current (ZopeInterface?) directory, so you can get there by typing:

    cd ..

Next, assuming you're in the directory TwistedSumo?-2005-05-25, install Twisted:

    python setup.py install

*INSTALL NEVOW*

    ("web app construction kit", more info at http://nevow.com/)

Download Nevow:

    http://nevow.com/releases/0.4.1/nevow-0.4.1.tar.gz

Unarchive:

    tar -zxvf nevow-0.4.1.tar.gz.tar

Next, cd into the resulting nevow-0.4.1 directory:

    cd

Next, install Nevow:

    python setup.py install

*INSTALL SIMPLETAL*

    (TAL is the Zope simple template language for XML and HTML)

Download SimpleTal?: http://www.owlfish.com/software/simpleTAL/downloads/SimpleTAL-3.12.tar.gz

Unarchive:

    tar -zxvf SimpleTAL-3.12.tar.gz

Next, cd into the resulting SimpleTAL-3.12 directory:

    cd SimpleTAL-3.12

Next, install SimpleTal?:

    python setup.py install

*INSTALL POSTGRES*

The PostGreSQL? setup may go a bit differently, depending on the distribution on Linux or other OS you are using. Here is what I needed to do on SuSE? 9.3.

Install PostGreSQL? client (and optionally the server) from YAST. You also need the development packages for Python and PostGreSQL?. I discovered that the CD install of SuSE? 9.3 did not have the python-devel package available. I added an ftp source for the main ftp install site and added that package.

Visit the psycopg web site to get the current checkout for the psycopg package.. We are using the 1.x branch at the moment, so you would do something like:

  svn co http://initd.org/svn/initd/psycopg1/trunk/ psycopg

 Change directory into the psycopg directory you just created and do the following:

  automake
  ./configure
  make
  sudo make install

I had to add two parameters to the ./configure

1. --with-mxdatetime-includes=/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/mx/DateTime?/mxDateTime/
2. --with-postgres-includes=/usr/include/pgsql

  [jrush]# ./configure --with-python-version=2.3 --prefix=/usr \
                       --with-python=/usr/bin/python2.3 \
                       --with-postgres-includes=/usr/include/pgsql \
                       --with-mxdatetime-includes=/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/mx/DateTime/mxDateTime/
  [jrush]# make
  [jrush]# sudo make install

Stay tuned for this...

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• Meeting Prep
• Getting Started Agenda

All operating systems are welcome and indeed, we have a diverse mix of Windows, Macs and Linux already. The sprinting site, nerdbooks.com, provides both wireless and wired Internet access.

See you there!