David tries Plone 4.0a2 (Part 1)

// under alpha buildout install plone plone 4 testing zope

Plone 4 is approaching!  Excellent!  Lots of new features to play around with and plenty more things to have to fix with the upgrade.  I’ve been keeping tabs on the change log of updates and it’s looking really good. Lots of little, but significant, changes are afoot.  Now, how about actually installing the Alpha 2 version of Plone 4 to see it for real? Let’s do it!

My steps are not going to work on your computer.  I don’t think you’ll be able to follow my words/commands exactly, but here goes anyway about my experience so far.  The buildout might/might not work on Windows/Mac; I’m on Linux and that’s that FYI.

• I grabbed the buildout from https://svn.plone.org/svn/plone/buildouts/plone-coredev/branches/ and beat it over the head with a stick.  I downloaded the Plone 4.0a2 versions.cfg from http://dist.plone.org/release/4.0a2/versions.cfg over the top of the one provided and made the buildout.cfg provided only extend off versions.cfg.  You’ll also need to strip back the ‘parts’ section of the buildout (eg no ‘test’ sections since I don’t really need to know things aren’t 100% right yet ;-) )

• Set up your virtualenv in your given folder, making sure you use Python 2.6.  It’s not marked in huge text and bold for you as much as it is for me.  If you see this:

  While:
  Installing.
  Getting section instance1.
  Initializing section instance1.
  Loading zc.buildout recipe entry plone.recipe.zope2instance >=2.0:default.
  An internal error occured due to a bug in either zc.buildout or in a
  recipe being used:
  )[1 if IS_WIN else 0]
  ^
  SyntaxError: invalid syntax
  

  then you need to stop using Python 2.4 and start using 2.6, okay?

• Make sure you’ve got the Python 2.6 development libraries installed on your machine.  Expect pain from Zope 2.12.1 (etc) if you don’t. If you see this:

  include/ExtensionClass/ExtensionClass.h:83:20: error: Python.h: No such file or directory
  ....[lots of nasty errors]...
  error: Setup script exited with error: command 'gcc' failed with exit status 1
  An error occured when trying to install Zope2 2.12.1.Look above this message for any errors thatwere output by easy_install.
  While:
  Installing.
  Getting section instance.
  Initializing section instance.
  Installing recipe plone.recipe.zope2instance.
  Getting distribution for 'Zope2==2.12.1'.
  Error: Couldn't install: Zope2 2.12.1
  

  then go and run this, then run Buildout again:

  sudo apt-get install python-dev
  

• Sort your PIL out.  See here: this post for how to handle it.  I’m sure there are other, possibly easier ways, but the two ‘easy_install’ lines in that post work.

• Run your buildout and hope there’s no other problems I haven’t covered.  If you get stuck, go say hi to Google and I’ll see you back here after class.  Other than that, wait a very long amount of time whilst the buildout completes, with or without fingers crossed.  Your choice.  My buildout’s going well so far, though.

And we’re done buildout-ing!  Success!

See my next post for my thoughts of this new version so far.

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