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hknweb

Welcome! This is the in-progress redesign for the HKN (Mu Chapter) website, built with Django.

Prerequisites

These are the software you are required to download and install. Unless noted, default settings are OK. Consult with officers on advice for preferences of certain settings.

There are other ways to install the following items. The instructions here will provide the EASIEST and SUFFICIENT way to install them. Ultimately, it is up to you on how to get them and install them if you want to do a more centalized way (i.e. Chocolatey for Windows) or a fancy pants method (i.e. Build from Scratch).

When Unix is used, it includes (not limited to) Linux, Windows WSL, and MacOS

  • git and Terminal
    • Unix systems usually have these out of the box
      • Default terminal usually zsh or bash
    • [Windows] git bash ONLY (due to Makefile syntax)
      • You can use the default options, with one exception: Select Use Windows' default console window in the Configuring the terminal emulator to use with Git Bash step. Do not use "MinTTY".
        • This is very important! If you do not select this option, your terminal won't work with Python!
        • If you already have Git Bash installed before, just redownload and rerun the EXE (no need to uninstall, but you may if you want or need to) and go through all the options (it should keep what you previously selected). On the Configuring the terminal emulator page, select Use Windows' default console window.
  • make (GNU Make)
    • Unix systems usually have this out of the box
    • [Windows] Follow instructions here using Winget
      • CORRECTION: For Steps 8 to 10: Under User variables (top half section), click on Path, click on Edit, click on New, and enter C:\Program Files (x86)\GnuWin32\bin
      • Article has other options too, but Winget is more out of the box. Next best thing is using Chocolatey which requires install of Chocolatey itself.
  • Miniconda (or Anaconda) + Python 3.7.3
    • Our server will also use Miniconda to allow for some flexibility in installing packages without having to wait for OCF to install them for us, like upgrading the Python version. As of Fall 2022, we currently use Python 3.7.3.
    • Install instructions here: README-CONDA.md
    • Commands Summary:
      • Initial setup: conda create -n hknweb python=<VERSION>, where VERSION is the Python version used by hknweb. Use make conda instead which does this for you.
      • Activate the conda environment with conda activate hknweb (do this every time you start developing on hknweb)
      • Deactivate conda environment with conda deactivate
      • Disable automatic base environment activation with conda config --set auto_activate_base false

Setup

Supported Terminals

  • Any Unix Terminals (including Windows WSL) -- usually zsh or bash
  • Windows Git Bash (ONLY) -- this is due to the Makefile syntax

Developing on hknweb requires a virtual environment so that every developer has the exact same development environment (i.e. Any errors that a developer has is not due to difference in configuration). We will be using Conda Environments to make our virtual environment.

Others exist like Python's built-in venv, but we won't use that here

This command creates our Conda Environment.

$ make conda

Alternatively, this command creates our Conda Environment completely from scratch: make conda-scratch

Next, we need to have our current terminal/shell use the Conda Environment we just created.

$ conda activate hknweb

Finally, we need to install all of our dependencies into the Conda Environment (and not the main computer system):

$ make install

In summary, the setup looks like:

$ cd hknweb                     # enter our main directory
$ make conda                    # create our Conda Environment
$ conda activate hknweb         # enter our Conda Environment
$ make install                  # install our dependencies
$ make migrate                  # apply all database changes
$ make permissions              # initialize our database
$ make dev                      # start local web server
$ conda deactivate              # Exit the Conda Environment

You may notice many of our Makefile commands can be ran manually.

We not only use Makefile commands to simplify and abstract away many commonly used development commands (especially setting the dev environment via HKNWEB_MODE='dev'), but also to sanity check to make sure we don't accidentally modify your main system (see how we call python in the Makefile).

Development

To run the Django development server (which runs a web server locally), run

$ make dev

which will make the web site available at http://localhost:3000.

If you would like to access the admin interface in the local web server, run

$ make createsuperuser

You will be prompted for some login info, after which you should be able to access the admin interface with your super user credentials at http://localhost:3000/admin.

Usually, Python code behavior between the Operating Systems is rare. However, Windows developers have the additional responsbility to make their code Linux-friendly (since our destination OS is Linux on OCF). Therefore, if there is an error on the code on Linux and not Windows, support on Linux takes precedence! Unix developers should also try to make their code Windows-friendly for the Window developers. Example with strftime

FAQ

This is a compilation of past errors and how they were solved.

Python won't load on Windows Git Bash

Git Bash's Terminal emulator should be Use Windows' default console window. Don't use MinTTY. Follow the instructions for reinstalling Git Bash in the Prerequisites section of this README.