Virtualenv being ignored by setuptools/Distribute/easy_install

This one couldn’t be simpler, but it’s worth noting all the same.  I’ve just experienced a situation where a virtualenv  was being completely ignored by all tools even though it was absolutely activated via source bin/activate.

The answer was to blow away the lib directory within the virtualenv and blow away the local Python interpreter at bin/python and re-create the virtualenv. After deactivating and re-activating, everything works correctly again.

I guess something in the environment (or env variables) got messed up. Who knows; it works now.

in Python · Fri 24 August 2012

Serving TileStache (or another app) using uWSGI against a web sub-directory

uWSGI is extremely promising as an application server given its huge range of options and supported platforms.  For me, however, just getting something seemingly simple up and running successfully was relatively confusing. I’d like to contribute to the documentation when I can, but thought a dedicated page about TileStache as a specific application (and associated configuration) was warranted. It does make more sense now, thankfully.

I want to serve my TileStache application at http://mydomain.com/tiles (taking careful note of the sub-directory present). I’ve chosen an INI-style configuration for my instance and here’s what the …

in Python · Fri 01 June 2012

mr.scripty - my new best friend

If you’re working with Buildout, then check out mr.scripty, a fantastic Buildout recipe that allows you to use Python code in functions within its options.  This means that - in the few instances I’ve used it so far - have conditional statements regarding effectively anything.

In the two examples I added to the source documentation, I go and configure download links based upon architecture and separately, configure some (Java) environment variables based upon which directories exist (eg to handle different Linux distributions that might be running). This is only the start, but it’s a fantastic one.

Amazing I …

in Python · Fri 24 February 2012

ImportError: No module named BeautifulSoup

Had this issue when you’ve been trying to run something like Funnelweb, and you hit an ImportError for BeautifulSoup?  You’re definitely not alone, because I just hit the same issue.  The answer is simple — just ensure that you don’t use BeautifulSoup 4 or above (this is still beta) — it uses a different namespace, specifically bs4. Thus, whilst you might have the BeautifulSoup egg satisfying your dependencies, any imports of this package are going to fail.

For me, I’m using buildout, so I just pinned my version of BeautifulSoup thusly:

[buildout]
...
versions = versions

[versions]
BeautifulSoup = 3.2 …

in Python · Fri 26 August 2011

Extracting a Buildout versions.cfg from a Zope instance script

Today, I needed to migrate some legacy Plone installs set up using Buildout. If I were to simply move the buildout files and re-run buildout, I’d end up with the latest versions of add-on products - and since I’m using legacy versions of Plone 3, that’d almost certainly break the system.  I do know about the Buildout extension buildout.dumppickedversions (which does what its name suggests and exports picked versions of eggs) but I can’t re-run buildout to get this extension for risk of updating existing products (what I’m trying to avoid!).

The good news is …

in Python · Thu 02 June 2011

Buildout: order of ‘extends’ configuration files

Yet another word to the wise: take care of your ordering of the ‘extends’ configuration files within your buildout.  It makes complete sense, and especially so with respect to version pinning: the later configuration’s versions will be the last one applied.

So, it makes a lot of sense (in hindsight!) that this configuration, and the fact I have version pins in my base.cfg, isn’t going to end well:

[buildout]
extends =
    base.cfg
    http://good-py.appspot.com/release/dexterity/1.0b2

The Dexterity version pins are going to override the ones I have in my base.cfg.  This …

in Python · Thu 06 January 2011

Python eggs and missing files (like ‘docs’)

This is pretty trivial (and trivial to fix), but I’m chronicling it for my knowledge as much as anyone else’s.  The issue is that a given Python egg is missing some form of files, most commonly the ‘docs’ directory in my experience, because the build wasn’t configured correctly.

The error goes somewhat like this:

Getting distribution for 'my.theme'.
error: docs/HISTORY.txt: No such file or directory
An error occured when trying to install my.theme 1.5.0. Look above this message for any errors that were output by easy_install.

The solution is simple: just …

in Python · Thu 06 January 2011

Plone/Zope, Python and collective.autoreload / plone.reload

Here’s an interesting error message I got stumped with for a good set of hours.  The issue started with me using collective.autoreload with Plone and it does the trick, mostly.  With any such ‘operation’ and live reloading of code for Python, you’ve got to expect that not everything will go according to plan.  Most things do, but one issue I found presented with this error message:

< ... huge traceback ...>
TypeError: super(type, obj): obj must be an instance or subtype of type

The issue arises for me (and you’ll probably see it elsewhere) when I go ahead …

in Python · Fri 20 November 2009

Creating & distributing a new Plone/PyPI product

It’s amazing to see how technologies can be so smoothly integrated these days.  I’m talking, at least in this instance, about how setuptools works with PyPI (and then Plone.org’s Products section) and allows you to distribute your product(s) to the world.  So far, I’ve just got the one — collective.portlet.googleapps — but I’m sure time will pass and I’ll have some more useful things to contribute. Here’s a summary of what I did:

1. Create the product.  ZopeSkel is a wonderful help here for Plone products. [I lie a little bit in …

in Python · Mon 17 August 2009

DateTime in Python/Zope/Plone is painful

Alright, now for today’s problem:  why do two dates that look different when outputted actually end up being the same date?

Answer: I’m not sure, but I’m pretty sure it’s got something to do with the wacky support the above-mentioned 3 products have for timezones.

The background: Plone stores a DateTime object to record a user’s last login time.  It doesn’t really matter what’s purpose is, because Plone (this time) isn’t at fault.  The DateTime gets stored, no worries.  The problem arises when you try to put that value back into a …

in Python · Fri 19 June 2009