Re: Was: [Re: Why I'm giving up on Django] Now: Creating Debian Application Installer package

[Jon Atkinson]

Thanks for that information, Ian - I was anticipating a day or so of
reasearch next week to package up my app, but hopefully I won't have
to now.

--Jon

On 10/2/06, ian <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> Baurzhan Ismagulov wrote:
> > Hello mamcxyz,
> >
> > On Fri, Sep 29, 2006 at 07:43:49AM -0700, mamcxyz wrote:
> >> - Deployment. I work on Delphi and the idea of put a EXE and all is
> >> working right (tm) is a feeling I lost with python on hosting.
> >
> > So what about writing a small script that will do this for you?
> > Something like
> >
> > tar cC /localdir/myprj . |ssh host tar xC /remotedir/myprj
> >
> > FWIW, I create a Debian package of my project and install it on the
> > server.
> >
> > With kind regards,
> > Baurzhan.
> >
> > >
> >
> Hi,
> This is very interesting and would maybe make a great tutorial ...here
> is my shot at how you would do this and create a hello-world application
> for Django (please correct the errors):
> 1. Create a directory hello-world-1.0.0 (more on debian package naming
> at Debian New Maintainers' Guide:
> http://www.us.debian.org/doc/maint-guide/) and put all files in it
> 2.Debian packages use makefiles (Makefile) instead of Python Distutils
> (Distributing Python Modules: http://docs.python.org/dist/dist.html) so
> we have to write a Makefile to act as an interface between the Debian
> package system and our setup.py.
> So create a file called "Makefile" containing this:
>
> all:
> python2.4 setup.py build
>
> clean:
> python2.4 setup.py clean --all
>
> install:
> python2.4 setup.py install
>
> 3. In a terminal run dh_make:
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~/hello-world-1.0.0$ dh_make -e [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> This will output some info to the screen (choose single binary as the
> package type) and it will then create a debian/ directory below the
> hello-world-1.0.0 directory. The key files in this directory are control
> and rules. In 'control' it's a "fill in the blanks" work and in 'rules'
>  it's essentially a matter of removing unwanted/unnecessary code
> Because our app is 100% Python we have 100% architecture
> independence...so the bottom of the rules file should look like:
>
> # Build architecture-independent files here.
> binary-indep: build install
> dh_testdir
> dh_testroot
> dh_installchangelogs
> dh_fixperms
> dh_installdeb
> dh_gencontrol
> dh_md5sums
> dh_builddeb
>
> binary-arch: build install
>
>
>
> 4.After step 3 we have to actually build the package now:
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~/hello-world-1.0.0$ dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot
>
> The parent directory should now have a file called
> hello-world_1.0.0-1_all.deb which is your Debian package to install
> where you like with dpkg -i  hello-world_1.0.0-1_all.deb
>
> []'s
>
>
>
> --
> Ian Lawrence
> Centre for Bioinformatics
> INSTITUTO NACIONAL DE PESQUISAS DA AMAZÔNIA-INPA
> RUA ANDRÉ ARAÚJO N º .2936 , BAIRRO DO ALEIXO
> MANAUS-AMAZONAS-BRAZIL
> Research Program in Biodiversity
> http://ppbio.inpa.gov.br
> PHONE: 055-92-3643-3358
> CEP. 69011 -970
>
> | Please do not send me documents in a closed
> | format.(*.doc,*.xls,*.ppt)
> | Use the open alternatives. (*.pdf,*.html,*.txt)
> http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html
>
> "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."
>
> >
>

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Was: [Re: Why I'm giving up on Django] Now: Creating Debian Application Installer package

[ian]

Baurzhan Ismagulov wrote:
> Hello mamcxyz,
> 
> On Fri, Sep 29, 2006 at 07:43:49AM -0700, mamcxyz wrote:
>> - Deployment. I work on Delphi and the idea of put a EXE and all is
>> working right (tm) is a feeling I lost with python on hosting.
> 
> So what about writing a small script that will do this for you?
> Something like
> 
> tar cC /localdir/myprj . |ssh host tar xC /remotedir/myprj
> 
> FWIW, I create a Debian package of my project and install it on the
> server.
> 
> With kind regards,
> Baurzhan.
> 
> > 
> 
Hi,
This is very interesting and would maybe make a great tutorial ...here
is my shot at how you would do this and create a hello-world application
for Django (please correct the errors):
1. Create a directory hello-world-1.0.0 (more on debian package naming
at Debian New Maintainers' Guide:
http://www.us.debian.org/doc/maint-guide/) and put all files in it
2.Debian packages use makefiles (Makefile) instead of Python Distutils
(Distributing Python Modules: http://docs.python.org/dist/dist.html) so
we have to write a Makefile to act as an interface between the Debian
package system and our setup.py.
So create a file called "Makefile" containing this:

all:
python2.4 setup.py build

clean:
python2.4 setup.py clean --all

install:
python2.4 setup.py install

3. In a terminal run dh_make:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]:~/hello-world-1.0.0$ dh_make -e [EMAIL PROTECTED]
This will output some info to the screen (choose single binary as the
package type) and it will then create a debian/ directory below the
hello-world-1.0.0 directory. The key files in this directory are control
and rules. In 'control' it's a "fill in the blanks" work and in 'rules'
 it's essentially a matter of removing unwanted/unnecessary code
Because our app is 100% Python we have 100% architecture
independence...so the bottom of the rules file should look like:

# Build architecture-independent files here.
binary-indep: build install
dh_testdir
dh_testroot
dh_installchangelogs
dh_fixperms
dh_installdeb
dh_gencontrol
dh_md5sums
dh_builddeb

binary-arch: build install



4.After step 3 we have to actually build the package now:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]:~/hello-world-1.0.0$ dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot

The parent directory should now have a file called
hello-world_1.0.0-1_all.deb which is your Debian package to install
where you like with dpkg -i  hello-world_1.0.0-1_all.deb

[]'s



-- 
Ian Lawrence
Centre for Bioinformatics
INSTITUTO NACIONAL DE PESQUISAS DA AMAZÔNIA-INPA
RUA ANDRÉ ARAÚJO N º .2936 , BAIRRO DO ALEIXO
MANAUS-AMAZONAS-BRAZIL
Research Program in Biodiversity
http://ppbio.inpa.gov.br
PHONE: 055-92-3643-3358
CEP. 69011 -970

| Please do not send me documents in a closed
| format.(*.doc,*.xls,*.ppt)
| Use the open alternatives. (*.pdf,*.html,*.txt)
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."

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Re: Why I'm giving up on Django

[Milton Waddams]

Just on the Apache 1.3 issue, I had the same problem on one of the
sites I developed, I was able to get the fastcgi module installed and
the site runs fine (has had some decent traffic levels).

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Re: Why I'm giving up on Django

[Norjee]

Well.. let me add to this discussion as well :)

1) Loading 'static' templates is, imho, easily achieved. I wanted
to lad them from the file system, but ended up putting static views in
the database (using a custom, 15 lines of code template loader and a
filter). The most astounding feature is the templates can extend each
other.. and that there's something like back-up template. For example
you have a template item.html, which shows an item, but if I want to
give item 24 a special treatment, I can make a template_24.html that I
put and the db (through a very rudimentary cms) and give item 24 a nice
distinguishing look. Amazing, yes, this way of working with templates
makes me happy ;)
2) Writing authentication is easy, I need it customized as well,
writing from scratch goes faster then customizing it. (Apart from that,
I use the built-in authentication for admins, and have a custom version
for users). I think it is more important that it is extremely easy to
work with things like middleware to built custom authentication than to
have a built-in 100% satisfying version of it. After all Django is not
a CMS, it's a framework.
3) I love manipulators (and as such I honestly don't see the need for
something else). But I can understand others don't like them. Of
course nothing is blocking you from using "bare-bones" html forms
and just mangling with the resulting POST parameters in your view.
4) As stated above, the admin is just for data entry, not for
end-users. (Though I like to misuse it to let end-user enter
"advanced" data, which normally shouldn't be touched on a regular
basis.
5) Well.. they're just python error stacks. But yes, not always
intuitive. However, to really understand you workflow some form of
logging is needed. And this is the first thing I added to Django, a
basic way of logging.
6) Deployment is such a tiny bit of the actual development of a webapp
that I couldn't care less how hellish this is. Once in place,
however, updating should be easy. But this is not a problem.
7) No comment. Imho not important.

BUT.. there are some other problems I ran into.

- Reverse lookup for urls doesn't work that well (still problematic
for decorated views). I already altered it a bit to suit my needs
(http://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/2615), but it would be great if,
somehow, routes (http://routes.groovie.org/index.html) would be usable
with Django.
- Schema evolution, but that's obviously wip, just as the multiple db
branch. The problem I now fid myself having is: using these branches,
or waiting for the sqlalchemy branch to be usable..
- Documentation. Everyone seems to say how great it is, I find it
lacking. I found myself looking at the source code quite often to find
out the finer details of Django. The basics are indeed well discussed,
but often I stumble over exact details. Moreover I've been using
external documentation (the excellent http://www.b-list.org/) more that
that available on the main site.

As a final remark, I think it is important to see Django as a
framework, not a complete CMS-like solution. I find it only logical to
add custom helpers (or libraries whatever you want to call them). Most
of the time this is rather easy. But sometimes not (url dispatching
(though admittedly, I don't see how to decouple it. However, not
hardcoding RegexURLResolver but instead allowing for a custom resolver
by configuring might help.. But then one app might need multiple
url-resolvers at the same time, as the admin app needs the
RegexURLResolver... nasty..)), and it are these 'sometimes not'
situations that things get troublesome.


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Re: Why I'm giving up on Django

[mamcxyz]

I think that can be nice

Specially when is necesary setup other dependencies I know some
things can not be automated easily because the diversity of linux
distros, but something in the lines to show what is need to deploy is a
*good* start.


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Re: Why I'm giving up on Django

[Baurzhan Ismagulov]

Hello mamcxyz,

On Fri, Sep 29, 2006 at 07:43:49AM -0700, mamcxyz wrote:
> - Deployment. I work on Delphi and the idea of put a EXE and all is
> working right (tm) is a feeling I lost with python on hosting.

So what about writing a small script that will do this for you?
Something like

tar cC /localdir/myprj . |ssh host tar xC /remotedir/myprj

FWIW, I create a Debian package of my project and install it on the
server.

With kind regards,
Baurzhan.

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Re: Re: Why I'm giving up on Django

[Wilson Miner]

That was actually a conscious decision to keep from needing support
images for the debug pages. I wanted them to be completely
self-contained, which is why we used the unicode glyph for the
disclosure triangle (a pretty universal UI indicator) to indicate that
those sections could be expanded.

On 9/29/06, Ivan Sagalaev <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> DavidA wrote:
> > I agree that the UI could be tweaked to make it more obvious, like
> > changing "Local vars" to "Click here to show local vars".
>
> This will just make this pile of text look more scary :-). You and
> Daniel didn't read it in the first place so changing text won't help.
>
> But what will help is using either actual standard buttons that are
> recognizable as being controls for clicking or styling text to look like
> a button (with colored 3-d looking border).
>
> >
>

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Re: Why I'm giving up on Django

[Ivan Sagalaev]

DavidA wrote:
> I agree that the UI could be tweaked to make it more obvious, like
> changing "Local vars" to "Click here to show local vars".

This will just make this pile of text look more scary :-). You and 
Daniel didn't read it in the first place so changing text won't help.

But what will help is using either actual standard buttons that are 
recognizable as being controls for clicking or styling text to look like 
a button (with colored 3-d looking border).

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Re: Why I'm giving up on Django

[DavidA]

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> Here's my anecdote on that.
>
> Even though it was literally staring me in the face, it took me AGES to
> discover that the error dump page is actually interactive and has
> little sections that expand and collapse.
> I kept running into error messages which told me about exceptions in
> the Django source code (this is the top part of the error page) and I
> kept thinking "well, where's the bloody use in that??? I want to know
> what MY error was! Grmbl.".
>
> It took me at least two weeks (yes, sometimes I really *am* that dense)
> until I scrolled down and explored and figured out that there was the
> information that I had been wanting all along.
> Somehow, the styles, fonts and layout choices of the error page (lots
> of text, lots of grey) made it totally non-intuitive for me that it was
> interactive.

You're not the only one. It took me quite a while to figure that out,
too. In fact, I only figured it out because I saw someone post a
screenshot to a blog one time and I was thinking "why does his
traceback show more source lines and the variable values?! Its not
fair!"

I was always afraid to admit that it took me so long to figure it out.
But now that you've come out of the closet...

I agree that the UI could be tweaked to make it more obvious, like
changing "Local vars" to "Click here to show local vars". I also don't
understand why the code and variables are hidden by default (which is
where I want to look 99% of the time) and the request and settings
information is expanded (where I end up finding the answer about 1% of
the time).

But pointing out these little things is the first part of the process
of making Django better. And it _does_ keep getting better, even over
the short period of time that I've been using it.

-Dave


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Re: Why I'm giving up on Django

[Don Arbow]

On Sep 29, 2006, at 7:43 AM, mamcxyz wrote:
> - I dislike the indirection to run django class... the thing about run
> python manage.py shell to really touch the classes... is not very
> "pythonic", or mainly, convenient.


How can the python shell not be pythonic?

Don



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Re: Why I'm giving up on Django

[mamcxyz]

I have some feelings with Django too, however after working two years
with ASP.NET (I'm certified by MS, if that show my commitment) and try
first with Clastle (a try on rails for .NET, but with the non-sense of
java-like framework) I found django.

I hate:

- Deployment. I work on Delphi and the idea of put a EXE and all is
working right (tm) is a feeling I lost with python on hosting. In the
end, I singup at jodohost mainly because was cheap, get VPS (but
unfortunally Centos 3/4, still I'm unable to install easily this
thing... I hate this point more and more)

I hate, hate, hate it. I build my first site in 1 1/2. 1/2 months was
coding (with not serious python experience) the other 1/2 with html,
desing and css and the rest is for deploying.

But this is a situation of python. So is not a fault of django..

(However, a setup script what download the prerequisites can be sooo
handy... any idea?)

- I dislike the indirection to run django class... the thing about run
python manage.py shell to really touch the classes... is not very
"pythonic", or mainly, convenient.

But is a minor thing...

- I don't understand the complexity of forms manipulators. But I worked
around it. Ok, is not that complex, but is not intuitive.

In the other hand, the template system is very powerfull (but I think
is not so friendly for people that only know the use of html desingners
like dreamweaver. But I before start to build things using topstyle, so
is great for me).

I like the OR mapper. Very cool. I like the url system ... but use
regex can be a little.. complex. I think must exist a auto-routing
mechanism like:

sample/_SLUG/_NUMBERS/_MONTHNAME

or something like... but not a big deal. Learn regex is a must.

I know before enter on this that Django is a stack and have their way.
I read all the docs before start the project and read the newsgrousp.

Dudes, do something about deployment and that all for me ;). I mean, a
installer or script that generate the configs for apache or lighttpd,
check dependencies (like PIL... I hate not have a working PIL :(, like
easy_install, db bindings, etc...)

I can help on this, only for the sake not walk again the painfull
experience on setup a VPS from scratch...


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Re: Why I'm giving up on Django

[Ivan Sagalaev]

Sean Schertell wrote:
> Instead of  
> providing some simple facility to let you override parts of the  
> standard manipulators

In fact you can do just that. Though it's not clearly documented. I 
recently wrote about it here: 
http://groups.google.com/group/django-users/tree/browse_frm/thread/f9c23a420303d03f/f1635e9a27c6ae68?rnum=11=seeking+clarification&_done=%2Fgroup%2Fdjango-users%2Fbrowse_frm%2Fthread%2Ff9c23a420303d03f%2F5cc17ee0636e3549%3Ftvc%3D1%26q%3Dseeking+clarification%26#doc_f1635e9a27c6ae68

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Re: Why I'm giving up on Django

[Holger Schurig]

> I kept running into error messages which told me about
> exceptions in the Django source code (this is the top part of
> the error page) and I kept thinking "well, where's the bloody
> use in that??? I want to know what MY error was! Grmbl.".

Django your easily find out if a module name in it's output 
starts with django. If yes, it could use CSS to make it lighter 
or gray or whatever.

In this case, the user-modules (e.g. urls.py or views.py) would 
stand out.

Easier for the eye to catch :-)

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Re: Why I'm giving up on Django

[[EMAIL PROTECTED]]

James Bennett wrote:
> Tracebacks are a really hard thing to handle well in an application
> stack with more than a couple of components; generally the debug pages
> are nice, though, because they give you the local vars at each level
> -- when (as is often the case) an error occurred because some code
> didn't raise an exception but *did* do something it shouldn't have,
> having the local vars can be a lifesaver.

Here's my anecdote on that.

Even though it was literally staring me in the face, it took me AGES to
discover that the error dump page is actually interactive and has
little sections that expand and collapse.
I kept running into error messages which told me about exceptions in
the Django source code (this is the top part of the error page) and I
kept thinking "well, where's the bloody use in that??? I want to know
what MY error was! Grmbl.".

It took me at least two weeks (yes, sometimes I really *am* that dense)
until I scrolled down and explored and figured out that there was the
information that I had been wanting all along.
Somehow, the styles, fonts and layout choices of the error page (lots
of text, lots of grey) made it totally non-intuitive for me that it was
interactive.

Oh, well.

Daniel


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Re: Why I'm giving up on Django

[[EMAIL PROTECTED]]

Hm... you could check Pylons, which would "solve" some of your problems.


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Re: Why I'm giving up on Django

[Dagur Ammendrup]

You can also just use the "next" parameter in the login form. Here's how I did it

On 29/09/06, Don Arbow <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On Sep 28, 2006, at 6:26 PM, Sean Schertell wrote:>> (2) This is a biggie for me. I can't believe that the authentication> module forces you to use hard coded urls for login/logout pages --> that's just maddening! So if you want to do it your own way, you have
> to totally roll your own authentication from scratch. More work. I> ended up hiring a guy to write a basic auth system that lets me set> my own urls.This isn't such a roadblock. There are many places in Django where
you can ignore the abstractions and use the low level code. In lessthan 5 minutes, I wrote my own login/logout methods and called out tothe basic auth methods when needed:from django.contrib import auth
from django.http import HttpResponseRedirectfrom django.shortcuts import render_to_responsedef login(request):if request.POST:username = request.POST.get('username', None)
password = request.POST.get('password', None)user = auth.authenticate(username=username,password=password)if user :if not user.isactive:
return render_to_response('user/login.html'{'message':'This account is not active.'})auth.login(request, user)return HttpResponseRedirect('/')
return render_to_response('user/login.html',{'message':'Please enter a username and password.'})def logout(request):auth.logout(request)return HttpReponseRedirect('/')
Don

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Re: Why I'm giving up on Django

[James Bennett]

On 9/28/06, Sean Schertell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> (1) The clean modular apps aren't totally decoupled because they
> still have to use the project's template directory and css (which
> makes sense perhaps but complicates things for what I'm trying to
> achieve).

No, they don't.

http://www.djangoproject.com/documentation/templates_python/#loader-types


> (2) This is a biggie for me. I can't believe that the authentication
> module forces you to use hard coded urls for login/logout pages

So file a ticket; the login/logout URLs are a bit of a wart, and we
could certainly stand to improve that situation.

> (3) FormWrappers are great until you need to do anything even
> slightly different from the django prescribed method, then you have
> to use custom manipulators which I found to be a giant pain in the
> ass.

There's a reason why we're working on a replacement for the
manipulator system :)


> (4) The admin section is certainly pretty enough for production use
> -- but it isn't flexible enough in my opinion.

I don't think it's ever going to be "flexible enough" or "customizable
enough" for every conceivable use. It's just plain impossible. Right
now, I think we do a good job of getting to, or at least close to, the
80% mark.


> (5) The polish is very nice -- no question. But I was disappointed to
> discover that many of those sexy error messages didn't reveal *my*
> coding error but just reported problems as they occurred in the
> django stack. So I was often left to guess about what part of my code
> was causing the issue.

Tracebacks are a really hard thing to handle well in an application
stack with more than a couple of components; generally the debug pages
are nice, though, because they give you the local vars at each level
-- when (as is often the case) an error occurred because some code
didn't raise an exception but *did* do something it shouldn't have,
having the local vars can be a lifesaver.


> (6) Not really a django issue but disappointing nonetheless. If you
> want to deploy to a cpanel server (which is stuck in the 1900's using
> Apache 1.3), you'll have to mod_proxy out to another web server such
> as Lighttpd with FastCGI.

There's not much that can be done about this; as Malcolm pointed out,
Apache 2 has been around for almost half a decade, and so if you want
to use Django under mod_python you need Apache 2.


> (7) The first thing I did after creating a new project was to
> organize the directory structure more sensibly. Littering the top
> level of your project with things like manage.py and urls.py just
> isn't very clean.

What would be cleaner? Also, the ROOT_URLCONF setting lets you put
your root URLs file anywhere on your Python path, and if you don't
like manage.py, just use django-admin.py with the
DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE environment variable or pass it the explicit
'settings' argument.

-- 
"May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house."
  -- George Carlin

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Re: Why I'm giving up on Django

[Don Arbow]

On Sep 28, 2006, at 6:26 PM, Sean Schertell wrote:
>
> (2) This is a biggie for me. I can't believe that the authentication
> module forces you to use hard coded urls for login/logout pages --
> that's just maddening! So if you want to do it your own way, you have
> to totally roll your own authentication from scratch. More work. I
> ended up hiring a guy to write a basic auth system that lets me set
> my own urls.


This isn't such a roadblock. There are many places in Django where  
you can ignore the abstractions and use the low level code. In less  
than 5 minutes, I wrote my own login/logout methods and called out to  
the basic auth methods when needed:

from django.contrib import auth
from django.http import HttpResponseRedirect
from django.shortcuts import render_to_response

def login(request):
if request.POST:
username = request.POST.get('username', None)
password = request.POST.get('password', None)
user = auth.authenticate(username=username,password=password)
if user :
if not user.isactive:
return render_to_response('user/login.html'
{'message':'This account is not 
active.'})
auth.login(request, user)
return HttpResponseRedirect('/')

return render_to_response('user/login.html',
{'message':'Please enter a username and password.'})

def logout(request):
auth.logout(request)
return HttpReponseRedirect('/')


Don



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Re: Why I'm giving up on Django

[Kenneth Gonsalves]

On 29-Sep-06, at 6:56 AM, Sean Schertell wrote:

> But I'm very sorry to say that one by one, all of these things turned
> out to be not so great after all. Here's what I found after six weeks
> of struggling to build a site in Django that would have taken a week
> or so in PHP

all the 7 points you mention have been bugging me for some time now.  
but I am not giving up on django for the simple reason that all of  
them are actively in the process of being fixed - as a casual look at  
the devel list would show you. In fact right now I am struggling with  
an app which I thought would take me 20 minutes - but has crossed a  
day and a half already because of these issues. But once its done -  
it'll stay done and i can sleep at night. You *have* noticed that the  
django community rocks - but dont realise that that is the prime  
reason why you shouldnt give up on Django

-- 

regards
kg
http://lawgon.livejournal.com
http://nrcfosshelpline.in/web/



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Re: Why I'm giving up on Django

[Malcolm Tredinnick]

On Fri, 2006-09-29 at 10:26 +0900, Sean Schertell wrote:
> Hi Guys,
> 
> I just wanted to share with the community my personal experience with  
> Django in the hopes that maybe some of my petty gripes might be  
> somehow helpful. Before doing that, I have to thank everyone in the  
> community for being so helpful and just so damn nice! Thanks so much  
> to all on this list and on the IRC channel.

Sorry to hear you're not completely satisfied, but thanks for taking the
time to write this regardless. It should be food for thought.

No doubt this will turn into a long thread and possibly not all relating
to your original issues, but some of your problems seems valid (others
seem to be a matter of perspective and experience and so not really
universally "fixable" in any real way). On the whole, though, it's good
to hear what people think.

A couple of brief comments below:
[...]
> (1) Clean modular design with 'apps' that can be imported into  
> 'projects'
> 
> (2) Included libraries for things like authentication
> 
> (3) Reasonably easy forms with form wrappers/manipulators
> 
> (4) The free Admin section!
> 
> (5) Overall really polished look and feel -- even the error pages
> 
> (6) Super simple deployment with mod_python
> 
> (7) Opinionated design decisions start you off with something  
> sensible so you don't have to reinvent the wheel for things like  
> naming conventions or directory structure.
> 
> --
> 
> But I'm very sorry to say that one by one, all of these things turned  
> out to be not so great after all. Here's what I found after six weeks  
> of struggling to build a site in Django that would have taken a week  
> or so in PHP.

That's probably an experience thing. Although Django does advertise
"stupidly fast" or something like that, I would prefer that we thought
of that "on average". Any new system takes a little while to ramp up.

That being said, the initial learning curve, particularly for the
corporate-style user, is something we are working on actively and should
continue to do so.

> --
> 
> (1) The clean modular apps aren't totally decoupled because they  
> still have to use the project's template directory and css (which  
> makes sense perhaps but complicates things for what I'm trying to  
> achieve).

Not sure why you didn't think you could put these inside the app
directories. It's possible.

>  More importantly, there's no built-in facility for  
> rendering templates which are just static pages. Yes I know there's  
> flatpages and templatepages but it would be a lot nicer if Django  
> just served up the template in the absence of a url-routed view. I  
> ended up writing my own little app to do this which took the better  
> part of a day. So it took extra work to accomplish something as  
> simple as serving a static html page.

It's not clear from this what you wanted to do that isn't covered by
flatpages of TemplatePages or a small variation thereof. But if there's
something you really needed here and couldn't do, I agree that could be
frustrating.

> (2) This is a biggie for me. I can't believe that the authentication  
> module forces you to use hard coded urls for login/logout pages --  
> that's just maddening!

Again, this isn't universally correct, so it would be interesting to
hear what your specific case was. You can have any URL you like being
the login URL (or even multiple ones -- so you can have a login box on
every page if you want) and you can redirect to wherever you like
afterwards. So customisable entry and exit points -- what other
flexibility is useful here?

The auth system is not the best documented piece of Django, though.
Improvements there will be welcomed by many people, I'm sure.

>  So if you want to do it your own way, you have  
> to totally roll your own authentication from scratch. More work. I  
> ended up hiring a guy to write a basic auth system that lets me set  
> my own urls.
> 
> (3) FormWrappers are great until you need to do anything even  
> slightly different from the django prescribed method, then you have  
> to use custom manipulators which I found to be a giant pain in the  
> ass. I spent literally several days working on one form (yes it's a  
> complex form -- but 4 days is ridiculous). The first thing that threw  
> me was that I wanted to use a more traditional  method of inputting a  
> date -- just three pulldown menus for month, date, year. Instead of  
> providing some simple facility to let you override parts of the  
> standard manipulators, as soon as you find something you want to do  
> that isn't included, you have to write a whole custom manipulator for  
> it.

Manipulators are a different way of thinking and it seems not entirely
intuitive to everybody. This is certainly a stumbling block for many and
one reason we are trying to improve them and remove a lot of the
complexity and restrictions they impose at the moment.

I suspect this is partly an experience/learning curve item, 

Re: Why I'm giving up on Django

[Adrian Holovaty]

On 9/28/06, Sean Schertell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> So at the end of the day, my experience with Django started off with
> a *lot* of excitement. I was thrilled because it seemed I'd found
> something that met my needs exactly. But in actual usage, I found
> that using django to build a website the way *I* want to build my
> website ended up being more work than if I'd just coded it by hand in
> PHP.

Sounds like Django in its current incarnation isn't for you. Thanks
for giving it a shot, thanks for the great feedback, and check out
Django again after a while. Have fun with the PHP!

Adrian

-- 
Adrian Holovaty
holovaty.com | djangoproject.com

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