Step 1: Install the Build Dependencies

Python 2.6 is close enough to 2.4 that the dependencies haven’t changed much (if at all).
sudo apt-get build-dep python2.6

Step 2: Download Python 2.4 Final

wget http://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.4/Python-2.4.tgz
tar -zxvf Python-2.4.tgz

Step 3: Configure and Install Python 2.4

My first attempt at building Python 2.4 failed with a buffer overflow. I found a Japanese forum post that had solved the issue by setting BASECFLAGS=-U_FORTIFY_SOURCE during the configure stage.
./configure BASECFLAGS=-U_FORTIFY_SOURCE
make
sudo make install

Step 4: Fix the Default Python Version

The make install step sets Python 2.4 as the default version of Python. I wanted to keep that at 2.6. So…
sudo rm /usr/local/bin/python
sudo ln -s /usr/bin/python2.6 /usr/local/bin/python

Step 5: Install into Virtualenv

I wanted to set up a virtualenv environment to test the app. Here I specify which version of python I want to use for the interpreter and activate it.
virtualenv env -p python2.4 --no-site-packages
source env/bin/activate

I had found some code on Django Snippets but it was also messing around with the way that form wizards were defined. I didn’t want to change the way that form wizards behaved so I stripped out the changes and was left with a minimal way to use a form wizard in a view.

The main thing to notice is that first you have to create an instance of the FormWizard. Then as the object to return from the view you must call the instance passing through the context and the request.

Example:

@login_required
def edit_form_wizard(request, slug):
    # Do some permission checking
    ..... snip .....

    # Set up the dictionary of initial data for the form
    # In this case, we are pre-filling some data from the first form only
    initial = {0: {'first_name': request.user.first_name,
                   'last_name': request.user.last_name,
                   'email': request.user.email,
                  },
              }

    # Create the form wizard
    form = EditFormWizard([ContactForm, SecondForm, ThirdForm], initial=initial)

    # Call the form wizard passing through the context and the request
    return form(context=RequestContext(request), request=request)

Hope this helps someone…

It turns out that I had enabled bash completion on one machine but not on the other.

To enable it for all users on your system you need to edit  /etc/bash.bashrc and uncomment lines 32 – 34 (in the default file) so it looks like:

# enable bash completion in interactive shells
if [ -f /etc/bash_completion ]; then
    . /etc/bash_completion
fi

Open a new terminal and auto-completion should now work.

I’ve been using SVN for years at work, and used it a little bit for personal projects.  It’s good enough but as I travel a lot and don’t always have a connection to my repository, it can be a bit of a pain.

Most of my personal projects are worked on by 1 or 2 people, so collaboration isn’t my main concern (although, maybe it should be).

About a year ago I started using bzr for my personal projects.  This was a great improvement for me as I could commit to my local branches when on a bus, or without internet for whatever reason, and push to my web server whenever the chance arose. I was happy enough with bzr and stayed out of the whole bzr vs git thing as it didn’t really concern me.

Then the whole Gnome DVCS thing kicked off which piqued my interest in trying out git. This coincided with me bumping into my old friend Rick on a drunken night out.  As usual, we bored our friends a little and talked about coding and this time git.  He was pretty enthusiastic about it so I thought I’d give it a shot.  Why not, my projects are fairly small so I don’t have a team to migrate over, just me.

I found Tailor and used that to convert a couple of my smaller projects to git.  I read some documentation and found a cheat sheet and then started playing.

So far, it’s been all good.  I’ve not had a hard time learning the UI, no harder than learning bzr’s anyway.  It seems quicker, but the one thing that makes me want to stay with git over bzr (or anything else) is the really quick and easy branching.  I found myself creating new branches to try out new ideas and features.  Even for really little silly things.  It was quick and painless to branch and merge.  Where as with svn and bzr I would have one or two branches for various bits of development + 1 per release, I quickly had 5 branches in git for different ideas and features I wanted to work on.  Merging the changes across different branches was painless, and deleting those ‘what if’ branches that really were going nowhere was easy too.  Although I still have to try pushing to a remote host, it doesn’t seem hard.

I think I’m going to stick with git for a long time.  I can’t see any reason not to use it.  It is as easy to use as bzr (for my use case), it’s fast and above all, its branching and merging are fantastic.  If you are a bzr user, and have been putting off trying git, now is a good time to do it.  I’m glad I did, it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be.

What are your experiences with git, bzr or any other version control software?

To fix it, edit your ~/.bashrc file.
gedit ~/.bashrc

Add these lines to the bottom of the file.
#Export the path for Ruby Gems
export PATH=$PATH:/var/lib/gems/1.8/bin

Save it and then source the file (to save you from logging-out and back in again).
source ~/.bashrc

Then you should be able to run capistrano as you would expect.

Please note: There are potential problems with this as Ruby Gems can install system libraries in this path that end up being used instead of the correct system ones.  This can potentially cause problems.  See Launchpad bug #262063 for a discussion of the issue.