Envbuilder 0.2.2

Envbuilder is a system for automatically building virtualenvs in Python. To do this, it uses a .env config file to define parcels, which are individual pieces of Python software to be checked out and installed into the virtualenv.<br /><br />Envbuilder is mainly tested under Linux, but it should work under any platform that supports unix-y commands (including cygwin). In fact, you might even be able to make one config file work on both Windows and *nix if you're careful.<br /><br />Installing<br /><br />To install envbuilder, you have two options: installing from git or installing from pypi. If you would like to install via git, use the following set of commands:<br /><br />git clone git://github.com/jasonbaker/envbuilder.git<br />cd envbuilder<br />python setup.py install<br /># if you plan on making changes to envbuilder, use this command:<br />python setup.py develop<br /><br />If you would like to install from pypi, you should use pip:<br /><br />pip install envbuilder<br /><br />The .env file<br /><br />The .env's file format is similar to the .ini file format, but there are some major differences. The best way to illustrate this is with an example. The following will make a virtualenv with envbuilder installed. There's probably not any good reason to do this other than to provide an easy example for the README:<br /><br />[project]<br />parcels = 'envbuilder', # Note the comma<br /><br /> [[DEFAULT]]<br /> git_checkout = 'git clone $url'<br /> python = '$PWD/bin/python'<br /><br /> [[envbuilder]]<br /> name = 'envbuilder'<br /> url = 'git://github.com/jasonbaker/envbuilder.git'<br /> setup = '$python setup.py develop'<br /> checkout = '$git_checkout'<br /><br />The sections<br /><br /> * project - This section is the top-level section. The only option it contains is "parcels". This is a list of all of the parcels to be installed into the virtualenv.<br /> * DEFAULT - In this particular example, this particular section is probably not very meaningful. However, when using multiple parcels, it is useful to define default values to be used in each section.<br /> * envbuilder - Here's where we actually define a parcel. There are currently only two options that need to be defined: setup and checkout.<br /><br />You'll notice that in both of these options, we use something called string interpolation. Every part that begins with a $ is defined somewhere else in the config file. The order that it uses to check is the following:<br /><br /> 1. The current section.<br /> 2. The DEFAULT subsection of the project section.<br /> 3. The project section.<br /> 4. The system's environment variables<br /><br />To run this, copy the .env file to where you want to build the project and run the following commands (the output only shows the shell commands, but the output is left out for brevity's sake):<br /><br />envbuilder co<br />--> git clone git://github.com/jasonbaker/envbuilder.git<br /><br />envbuilder setup<br />--> virtualenv --no-site-packages .<br />--> /home/jason/src/envbuilder-src/bin/python setup.py develop<br />(From: /home/jason/src/envbuilder-src/envbuilder)<br /><br />As you can see, the setup command is executed from within the checked out envbuilder directory (which is why the $cwd variable is required). You can also see that the checkout command was translated in the following steps:<br /><br /> 1. $git_checkout<br /> 2. git clone $url<br /> 3. git clone git://github.com/jasonbaker/envbuilder.git<br /><br />Questions<br /><br />Can't buildout do everything you're doing?<br /><br />Yes, it can (and more). I'm of the opinion that that isn't necessarily a good thing. After all, C++ can do much more than Python. And yet, people still use Python because programming in it is much simpler.<br /><br />What revision control systems do you support?<br /><br />Envbuilder currently has support for svn (via an svn_checkout default option). However, you can theoretically use any revision control system that has a command-line interface.<br /><br />Does envbuilder have to be used for Python?<br /><br />Envbuilder was designed to be flexible enough that it could theoretically be used with other languages, but this has not yet been tried. Any saps (aka "open source developers") willing to test this out are encouraged to do so!

Requirements:	No special requirements
Platforms:	*nix, Linux
Keyword:	Clone,  Commands,  Config,  Default,  Define,  Envbuilder,  Install,  Installed,  Options,  Parcels,  Project,  Python,  Section,  Setup,  Setuppy,  Virtualenv
Users rating:	0/10