Tipfy Installation ¶

Tipfy is provided in two flavors:

• All-in-one: an larger archive containing all libraries: zip or tar.gz. Simply download and unpack on a machine.
• Do-it-yourself: a smaller archive containing only the files necessary to make your own build: zip or tar.gz. Download and unpack the installer info, then use the buildout to download and install the Tipfy packages.

Both have the same directory structure, but the do-it-yourself archive is very small (less than 10 kB) and practical to transfer around. However it requires some extra steps to get everything ready. If you don't want to bother with any detailed instructions, the all-in-one archive will give you everything you need to see an app running in a minute.

Before you start¶

Development with Tipfy on Google App Engine requires two things:

• Python 2.5 - Download
• The App Engine SDK

If you already have both installed in your system, ignore this section and jump directly to the installation instructions. Otherwise here are the steps to follow:

• Install Python 2.5 if you don't have it already. Google App Engine requires version 2.5 and won't work properly if you use a different version. It must be Python 2.5, not 2.4 or 2.6. We're repeating this because a lot of people get stuck on weird problems later, only to realize that they should be using Python 2.5 and not something else! You can check which version you have typing in the command line:

    python --version
    //
    // also possible on some distributions
    python2.5 --version
    
  

  We won't cover Python 2.5 installation here; there are enough tutorials on the web covering it for different systems. Go ahead and grab a good one.
• Install the App Engine SDK if you don't have it already. The SDK contains a development server and tools to manage and deploy your application. The do-it-yourself pack is so nice that it will download the SDK for you, so you can just ignore this. But if you're using the all-in-one pack, you must install the SDK first. You can download it here.

All-in-one installation¶

If your choice was the all-in-one pack, all you need to do is to start the development server pointing to the /app dir inside the uncompressed archive:

1. Download and uncompress the all-in-one archive: zip or tar.gz.
2. Run the dev_appserver tool from the App Engine SDK (or the App Engine Launcher) pointing to the app directory inside the uncompressed directory:

   dev_appserver.py /path/to/project/app
     
   

3. Open a browser and test the URLs:

   http://localhost:8080/
   http://localhost:8080/pretty
     
   

You should see a Hello, World! message. If you do, that's all. Now you have a project environment to start developing your app.

Do-it-yourself installation¶

If you have chosen the do-it-yourself pack, you need to first install the needed libraries before running de development server. Here's how:

1. Download and uncompress the do-it-yourself archive: zip or tar.gz.
2. Enter the project/ directory and run the "buildout bootstrap" script using your Python 2.5 interpreter. We pass the command option --distribute because it is preferable to the default setuptools. This will prepare buildout to run:

   cd project
   python bootstrap.py --distribute
     
   

   Problems?
3. Build the project calling ./bin/buildout. This will download and setup Tipfy and all libraries inside the /app directory. It may take a while (you can go and get your instant coffee).

   ./bin/buildout
     
   

4. Start the development server calling bin/dev_appserver. It will use the application from /app by default:

   bin/dev_appserver
   

5. Open a browser and test the URLs:

   http://localhost:8080/
   http://localhost:8080/pretty
     
   

You should see a Hello, World! message. If you do, that's all. Now you have a project environment to start developing your app.

Post-installation¶

Only a subset of extensions (those listed in buildout.cfg) are installed. See the instructions to add or remove extensions.

Troubleshooting¶

Our goal here was to provide a smooth installation process so that you can see a tipfy application up and running in a few minutes. If you had any problems, please post a message to the discussion group.

• Version: latest
• Edited by devvypy on 12/5/10 7:07 PM
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