[Twisted-web] Obvious stuff... just not to me, re: Failure to Install...

[Dav Clark]

First off, thanks for answering my e-mail so thoroughly!  I even had  
a lightbulb moment with your "nevow/plugins is just a directory"  
comment (though now I'm thinking "but why does it use an __init__.py  
then?" - but I'm letting it go for now).  As for your questions, I  
attempt to answer below.

On Jun 18, 2007, at 12:00 PM, Jean-Paul Calderone wrote:

> setup.py is basically fully supported.  If you find bugs in it, we  
> will do
> our best to fix them.  easy_install isn't really supported at all;  
> please
> don't suggest it or anything related to setuptools.

Got it - I guess the failure to install javascripts really is a  
"real" bug then... but I've reported it already.

>> 3a) So, for example, after getting the thing working with the stock
>> nevow/plugins directory, I standardized on having a local nevow/  
>> plugins
>> directory as a sibling of my tac file.  I would suggest this  be the
>> recommended (or at least an alternative) method described in  the  
>> wiki -
>> this keeps all example files bundled under the same root  dir.   
>> This also
>> allows the possibility of bundling a tar or zip of an  athena  
>> package, you
>> un-archive it, and the example just works with  twistd -ny  
>> example.tac from
>> where it sits.  (well, you need to alter  the /path/to/your/file to
>> sibpath(__file__, 'mymodule.js')).
>
> I'm not totally clear on what you're suggesting here.  As described  
> on the
> wiki, the plugin system does let you keep all of your source files  
> beneath
> one directory.  Maybe I'm not understanding your concern, or maybe  
> you're
> still missing something about how plugins work.  Could you describe  
> this
> issue further?

An example is probably more useful.  I've put something here for you:

http://www.keepopen.com/files/athena-example.tar.bz2

You can just un-archive that and immediately run `twistd -ny  
myelement.tac` (and you can check those files with a quick diff  
against the default Athena tutorial files to see the very few changes  
- basically those described above).

Anyway, I'll admit that you're not forced to learn as much my way!

>> 3b)  I would go a step further and suggest that, as in zope, a way to
>> create "instances" be created.  This would just mean populating a   
>> directory
>> with things like a plugins direcotry, a js dir for
>> nevow.athena.autoJSPackage to load and other stuff I haven't  
>> learned  about
>> yet.  A set of scripts localized for that instance would add  the
>> appropriate root to the python path before running.  Or, you   
>> could just
>> require people to run twistd from the root dir of the  bundle.   
>> This would
>> be remarkably similar to the "solution" for 3a.
>
> Requiring extra programs in order to run the actually interesting  
> program
> doesn't interest me very much.  Beyond this, I'm not really sure  
> how this
> suggestion differs much from the current system, except that it  
> explicitly
> makes environment setup something that goes into a helper script,  
> rather
> than relying on each user to have an environment which is "correctly"
> configured.  Perhaps the documentation should go into more detail  
> about
> what Nevow considers a "correct" environment?

Agreed - maybe some of the "agreed" changes to the wiki will go some  
way towards this.  I was thinking of something more like a helper  
script.  But I'm beginning to understand that if you're using  
twisted, you're probably doing something complicated... so you should  
probably think about things before you do them :)

Maybe an environment recipe collection would be nice.

>> 3d) Speaking of strange .js includes, some system (correctly?)   
>> associates
>> the nevow/empty.js file with most Nevow classes.  But for  root  
>> classes, you
>> also get these __init__.js associations, which are  non-existent  
>> *.js files.
>> Is this a bug?
>
> Hmm, could be.  Can you describe this further?

--
import nevow.athena
jsd.getModuleForName('MyModule') # or whatever
print jsd.mapping
--

yeilds (among many other things):

{ ......
u'Divmod': '/Users/dav/Desktop/SecurMe/dev/Nevow/nevow/js/Divmod/ 
__init__.js',
u'Divmod..svn': '/Users/dav/Desktop/SecurMe/dev/Nevow/nevow/empty.js',
u'Divmod..svn.prop-base': '/Users/dav/Desktop/SecurMe/dev/Nevow/nevow/ 
empty.js'
.....}

These "empty.js" files occur if and only if we're mapping to a .svn  
directory.  So, I guess this is just a side-effect of my using a svn  
checkout.  But it's still weird.  That emtpy.js file does exist -  
it's empty.

The __init__.js entries refer to non-existent files.

>> 5) Why do all examples have twistd -noy, when -y implies -o?
>>
>
> Historic reasons.  The people writing these wiki pages probably  
> still have
> finger memory from before -y implied -o. :)  Feel free to fix this.

I see no need to remove history!

Thanks again,
Dav