Jannis Leidel

I’m catching up right now with my Summer of Code project after some horrible exams and have now the time to read the very interesting discussions on the Django developers list.

First, as you may know I wrote some code which changes django.core.management (django-admin.py/manage.py) to ask for basic metadata as soon as the user creates a new django application with “startapp”. The metadata gets stored in a release.py for easy manipulation. A setup.py is also provided to use any functionality of the setuptools.

Unfortunately the problem isn’t just a matter of the actual process of packaging. As pointed out in the discussion about best practices and default application layouts it’s mere the problem of giving the not-so-pro-developers the chance to use pre-built applications without forgetting the needs of the pros.

One proposal was a better documentation of best practices to help beginners understand why “projects” are good to dive into django but are awkward when it comes to distribution and deployment. A great default application scheme was written by Sebastian Macias, even if it confused me a little at first because it imitates Python’s “site-packages”..

I’m sure some of you already have solutions for distribution/deployment because it is obligatory for high traffic sites (or is it?). Server arrangements are pretty cool too, but there must be more. Django applications should be treated like applications not like websites.

Anyway the fact remains: a standard system to manage Django-based modules is required, whether we call them apps, snippets, components, extensions or plugins (think of Wordpress). I proposed to use setuptools even if a lot of people seem to be annoyed about it (why exactly?).

Turbogears and Pylons are using Paste and Setuptools in combination to provide reusability and deployment - considering the different code structure and software strategy a smart decision. Django may need some own handlers to solve the different aspects of this whole topic. Why not rethink the way Django gets deployed?

UPDATE:
You may be interested in reading this: Ian Bicking’s view on the failures of setuptools and python packaging. Well then.. so then just don’t do for Django either? Naah..