How to change the SVN default text editor

export SVN_EDITOR=vim

Because vim ROCKS !

Martin

SVN directory out of date Error message

I sometimes get a :

svn: Commit failed (details follow):
svn: Directory '/trunk' is out of date

1. Run :

svn update

2. Then run

svn commit

Most of the time this would do the trick !

Martin

Django - Apache - SVN with production and development environment.

After getting my Django website up and running with Apache and mod_python,
I thought that it would be even better to have two versions of it running. A Production version, that is stable and that has been checked with -almost- no bugs, and a Development version, where I can play around add features, and fix bugs.
And because I am tired of having to do tar files in order to have backups of what I do, I thought it was time to stop being scared of versioning, and give it a go.
It took me a whole week to find a setup that works pretty well on my server, but feel free to leave a comment if think I should have done things differently !

Here is the plan :
 

1. Install and configure SVN to be able to rollback to a previous version.
2. Setup a separate Dev and a Prod environment using SVN(subversion).
3. Apache Virtual Host for Dev and Prod environment.
4. Different settings.py files on Production and Development
   

1. Install SVN on Ubuntu.

Run the following command :

sudo apt-get install subversion

Ok now that SVN(Subversion) is installed, we need to decide in which folder you want to have your files saved. SVN is like a database of your files.
You can tell subversion to save the changes you make to a file, a group of files, or a folder, every time you are happy with the changes you've made.
All you have to do is to tell it where you want it to store these infos.
I chose /home/svn/ because I have lots of space on my /home/ directoy, but feel free to change these settings !

To create this directory also called a repository, you need to run the following command :

sudo svnadmin create /home/svn

Now that this is done, you can run ls -l /home/svn to doublecheck that the folder has been created correctly.

Since you have your repository created, ready to be fed with your project, you want to import these files for the first time in SVN. By doing this, SVN will record every changes that you do to your project, and be able to rollback to a previous version of a file in case you made a mistake ! Isn't that great !?

The only thing that you need to know about SVN, is that by convention, you have to create 3 folders that will be containing your project :

• trunk/
• tags/
• branches/
  

All we are interested in at that level (my level lol) is trunk/ .My project is located in /home/martin/code/martincozzi/, and I want to store it inside /home/svn/martincozzi/trunk/ .

I am now going to prepare my SVN repository to store these files.

mkdir /tmp/martincozzi/trunk
mkdir /tmp/martincozzi/tags
mkdir /tmp/martincozzi/branches

Why /tmp ? Because i am just building a architecture for my SVN and I don't really need these folders after ! To import these files into my SVN repository I type :

sudo svn import /tmp/martincozzi/ file:///home/svn/martincozzi/ -m "Folder Hierarchy Creation"

The -m option stands for Message. I am just leaving a message for myself later on saying "This is when I created my file hierarchy".
Now that this is done. I can now import my project files into my trunk folder. Again, why trunk/ ? It's just a convention so don't worry about it.

sudo svn import /home/code/martincozzi/ file:///home/svn/martincozzi/trunk -m "Importing website into SVN"

Great ! My website is now into the SVN ! What does this mean ? Wherever I am, I can now get the latest version of my project and work on it !

To do this I need to Checkout my project into a folder of my choice !

2. Setup a Dev and Prod environment.
 

Note : Because I want to separate my Dev environment from my Prod environment, I will checkout project inside a /dev folder ! The path to my Dev environment will then be /home/martin/code/dev/martincozzi/ . I strongly recommend that you do the same !

mkdir /home/martin/code/dev/
mkdir /home/martin/code/prod/

To checkout my project into /dev I do the following :

svn checkout file:///home/svn/martincozzi/trunk /home/martin/code/dev/martincozzi

By doing this I get the last version of my project, ready to worked on ! Every change that I make will on this files will be recorded by SVN !
For example edit /home/martin/code/dev/martincozzi/settings.py , save the change, then type in

svn diff

SVN will tell you which files have been edited.

Let's say that I've done a couple of changes, and that I am happy with them. I want to commit my changes to the SVN to tell it that I want to save this changes into a new version. I just type in :

 svn commit -m "Here is a list of changes that I've made : bla bla bla bla "

My changes have been submitted to SVN. I am now ready to show the public the changes that I've made to my webiste. In order to do that, I want it to be published inside /home/martin/code/pub/martincozzi/ . To do so, I will use the export command from svn.

svn export file:///home/svn/martincozzi/trunk/ /home/martin/code/prod/martincozzi/

And I now have the last version of my website in my prod/ folder ! I can now setup Apache to have two addresses, like :

• dev.martincozzi.com
• www.martincozzi.com

With dev being the website I am developing and www.martincozzi.com the running version of it !

3. Apache VirtualHost for Prod and Dev sites

If you followed my "How to setup Django & Apache with mod_python and static files" tutorial, just edit the files you've already created as follow.

<VirtualHost *>
  ServerAdmin admin_contact@martincozzi.com
  DocumentRoot /home/martin/code/prod/martincozzi/
  ServerName martincozzi.com
  ServerAlias www.martincozzi.com
  <Location "/">
    SetHandler python-program
    PythonHandler django.core.handlers.modpython
    SetEnv DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE martincozzi.settings
    PythonDebug Off
    PythonPath "['/home/martin/code/prod/'] + sys.path"
  </Location>
</VirtualHost>

And for the dev part :

<VirtualHost *>
  ServerAdmin admin_contact@martincozzi.com
  DocumentRoot /home/martin/code/dev/martincozzi/
  ServerName dev.martincozzi.com
  ServerAlias dev.martincozzi.com
  <Location "/">
    SetHandler python-program
    PythonHandler django.core.handlers.modpython
    SetEnv DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE martincozzi.settings
    PythonDebug Off
    PythonPath "['/home/martin/code/dev/'] + sys.path"
  </Location>
</VirtualHost>

Easy isn't it ?!

One thing tho .. You settings.py on /prod/ has to be different than your settings.py on /dev/ . Well here's a cool fix !

4. Different settings.py files on Production and Development

To keep up minimum efforts, and not having to change my settings.py file everytime I commit --> export my project, this is what I do !

I copy my /dev/settings.py into /dev/local_settings.py

cp /home/martin/code/dev/martincozzi/settings.py /home/martin/code/dev/martincozzi/local_settings.py

local_settings.py is going to be my config file for /dev/ whereas settings.py is going to be my /prod/ settings file.
In local_settings.py make the following changes :

DEBUG = True

 And in settings.py change it to :

DEBUG = False

 And of course change your MEDIA_ROOT and TEMPLATE_DIRS  according to your templates info, with /prod/ for settings.py, and /dev/ for local_settings.py
Once you've done this, at the bottom of settings.py add the following code :

try:
  from local_settings import *
except ImportError:
  pass

This tries to load the local_settings.py infos, and if it can't then just use the settings.py infos !
Doing this, you can tell SVN no to commit the local_settings.py

 svn propedit svn:ignore local_settings.py .

Install a LAMP Server on ubuntu.

First run :

sudo apt-get update

This will update  the apt list of software available on your machine. Then run :

sudo apt-get install apache2 php5 mysql-server libapache2-mod-auth-mysql php5-mysql phpmyadmin

This will install Apache2, Php5, MysQL and PhpMyAdmin ! To finish the installation of MysQL type in :

sudo mysql_secure_installation

You are good to go ! Let me know if you have any questions.

Martin Cozzi.

How to setup Django & Apache with mod_python and static files.

Okay so it all started up when I thought I would develop my new project with Django. After having something that I was quite happy with, I thought it was time for people to have a look at it.

To run Django on development, I was using the built-in server with python manage.py runserver 0.0.0.0:8080 which ended up being www.martincozzi.com:8080 .. not very cool !

So I thought it would be better if I run it off Apache. Since I have several websites on my server, I use Apache's VirtualHost to set them up.

So first I assume that :

1. You have Django Installed and that you have an idea of what Django is for.
2. You have Apache installed.

If yes, then this is the plan ! :

1. Get your Django site to run on Apache.
2. Serve static files off Apache and understand Why you should do this. (eg: pictures,css etc .)
   

1. Get your Django site to run on Apache.

Getting Django to run on Apache was not and easy thing to find, but once I understood how to do it, it's not so bad !

I store my website in the /home/martin/code/martincozzi/ folder. This folder is the root folder of my django website, which means I have the settings.py file in there.

So let's say that I want to configure my site to run on www.martincozzi.com. I need to create a virtual host first, and tell that host I want it to run from my django site folder.

<VirtualHost *>
ServerAdmin admin_contact@martincozzi.com
DocumentRoot /home/martin/code/martincozzi/
ServerName martincozzi.com
ServerAlias www.martincozzi.com
<Location "/">
SetHandler python-program
PythonHandler django.core.handlers.modpython
SetEnv DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE martincozzi.settings
PythonDebug Off
PythonPath "['/home/martin/code/'] + sys.path"
</Location>
</VirtualHost>

And this is enough to get Django to run off Apache ! Add these info at the bottom of your apache conf file and restart apache :

sudo vim /etc/apache2/sites-available/default

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Et voila ! If I go to www.martincozzi.com I now have my django website running from Apache.

2. Serve static files off Apache.

Now that I have my website running from Apache, I need to have Apache to serve the static_files as well. Why ? Because your web page will load way quicker than if the static files are being served by Django.

I store my static files in a folder that i call static_media, inside my templates file:

martincozzi/

--> templates/

--> static_media/

--> style.css

In order to do this I edit the VirtualHost I just created, and add this piece of code after </Location>.

Alias /static_media/ /home/martin/code/martincozzi/templates/static_media/

<Location "/static_media">

SetHandler None

</Location>

I have to reload Apache now :

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

My Django website is now running of Apache. Apache is also serving my static_files. I can now go to www.martincozzi.com and reload the page. The files will be served by Apache.

If you want to know how to install a Development Environment, as well as a Production environment running with Subversion(SVN), follow this post.

Martin Cozzi