2005-08-18T01:41:00.000-07:00

I tried django. I have been messing with python and with the idea of web site creation. Being a regular reader of the 'daily python URL' I just had to try django. Before I start my comments I'd like to relate an analogy.

I once worked on cars. Friends (you get plenty when you work on cars) would sometimes ask me to test a second-hand car they were thinking of buying. I would tell them that it would be better to ask their grandmother to test it. She would complain about any little fault while I would just adapt to them without thinking.

Now to my django initiation. Went to the download page. They recommend something I have never seen before - to use the latest, bleeding edge version. This is to be retrieved with subversion. OK, it can't be worse than my cvs experience, so I download subversion. I must add here that I live in the sticks in France and, in spite of grand Chiracien statements, we have no ADSL. To continue, I get subversion and start to install it. It tells me I only have version 2.0.52 of Apache and that it won't play if I don't upgrade to 2.0.54. OK, another download. Another install. Where was I? Oh, yeah, I was interested in django a while back ....

Finally I have a new version of Apache, subversion and now to get DJANGO. But wait. I don't know how to use subversion. I take a chance and copy the command line given to get django and run the command off C:\Program Files\Subversion\bin. It works.

I just do the setup.py stuff and that works fine. Late and tired. Now the morning and I start tutorial0.txt. Run the command to set up my project. No go. Not in the path. Take a look at site-packages. Why do people do this? Python is pretty good about finding stuff if it is in the right place. Why do I end up with the first command in the first tutorial that is not in 'site-packages\django' where it would make things simple but in 'site-packages\django-1.0.0-py2.4\bin' which necessitates manipulating the path variable. Then, when I have gone through this rigmarole, rebooted and the command to set up my project directory is finally run I find that to run my project I need to play the path game again.

Now this latter is against any proper way of running stuff on any operating system I've worked on. The executables go in the path and instances of these get run wherever they are by the executable. No doubt there is a special reason for this but it would ease the pain if this were to be explained.

Maybe I'll get over this final barrier and actually start to see the wonders of django.

BTW, the meaning of 'Two finger salute' is a bit severe in the UK. For those who don't know, Django Reinhardt had just two able fingers on his left hand,

passando