[Grok-dev] Virtualenv the way to go

[Lennart Regebro]

On Jan 16, 2008 11:20 AM, Sebastian Ware <sebastian at urbantalk.se> wrote:
> After experiencing some version conflict galore (most probably of my
> own making...) and having it so elegantly solved (it would seem
> anyway) by virtualenv I would like to suggest that this becomes the
> recomended setup for evaluation and development. There is howto here:
>
>    http://plone.grok.quintagroup.com/documentation/how-to/using-virtualenv-for-a-clean-grok-installation
>
> Also, I think one should point out that easy_install can be forced to
> use a specific version of python by calling: easy_install-2.4 or
> easy_install-2.5. I think my problems started when I did an easy
> install of grokproject and it used python 2.5. Suddenly stuff was
> spread all over the place and it has taken me a while to realise what
> has been going on.

Personally I like to have, as the swedish saying goes, "both a belt
and suspenders", and hence nowadays use both a separate python
installation for my Zopes, and virtualenv for each one. But in that
case the --no-site-packages parameter can be skipped. This of course
means you don't have to install *everything* locally, but commonly
used and not frequently updated packages such as python-mysql and
such, can still be kept centrally without fear of system software
conflicting with Zope.

Should a conflict arise at a later date, you can rerun the virtualenv
with the parameter, and the site packages will be ignored (of course
requiring you to reinstall the central packages).

-- 
Lennart Regebro: Zope and Plone consulting.
http://www.colliberty.com/
+33 661 58 14 64