How to Install TurboGears Without root Privileges

Contents

• How to Install TurboGears Without root Privileges
  • Method One: Using virtualenv (Recommended)
  • Method Two: Using pydistutils.cfg
  • References

When you install TurboGears on a Unix-like system (including Mac OS X), using the standard procedure with tgsetup.py, you will need root privileges to install the Python packages to the system-wide Python site-packages directory and scripts to /usr/local/bin. This may not be desirable or possible for everybody.

It’s easy to tell tgsetup.py to install TurboGears below your home directory instead, so you don’t need to be root or use sudo. There are several methods to achieve this. Two of them are explained on this page.

Method One: Using virtualenv (Recommended)

virtualenv is a tool to create isolated Python environments. An environment has its own installation directories and doesn’t share libraries with other virtualenv environments (and optionally doesn’t use the globally installed libraries either). We can employ this to create a TurboGears environment and tell tgsetup.py to use this as the install location with only a few commands:

Note

Note: the $ at the start of the command line examples given below denotes the shell prompt. You don’t need to enter this.

1. Install virtualenv from the Cheeseshop:

   Now, here we have a little chicken & egg problem, because to install virtualenv, you either need root access, or you need to install it below your home directory and make Python find it. The good thing is, you don’t need to install virtualenv to use it, you can just run the the script directly from the directory where you unpacked the distriution.

   If you want to install virtualenv and can live with gaining root privileges just once for this occasion, then do:

   $ sudo easy_install virtualenv

   If you can’t or don’t want to install it, follow these steps:

   1. Download virtualenv-X.Y.tar.gz from the virtualenv Cheesehop page.
   2. Unpack the tarball.
   3. In step two below, substitute “virtualenv” with the full path to the virtualenv.py script located in the directory you just unpacked.

2. Create & activate a new environment:

   $ virtualenv --no-site-packages </path/to/new/environment>
   $ source </path/to/new/environment>/bin/activate

   Note

   The --no-site-packages option to virtualenv specifies that in your environment there is no access to the modules installed in the system-wide Python site-packages directorie(s). This is normally recommended, since this prevents problems due to dependency interferences with packages installed there. But if you need access to some packages there, e.g. a system-wide installation of a Python database module, you may need to leave this option out. For more information see the virtualenv documentation.

3. Install TurboGears by downloading [1] and running tgsetup.py:

   $ wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/turbogears1/files/1.0/tgsetup.py
   $ python tgsetup.py --script-dir=</path/to/new/environment>/bin/

[1]	(1, 2) On Mac OS X, wget is not installed by default, so use this command to download tgsetup.py instead: curl -O http://sourceforge.net/projects/turbogears1/files/1.0/tgsetup.py

Now, every time you open a new terminal session to work with the new environment, you need to activate it by running the source command given above. You can create as many virtual environments as you like and install different versions of TurboGears or other Python packages in them and they won’t affect each other.

Tip

If you want, you can write a little shell wrapper for your project’s start script, that activates the appropriate environment and then starts the server. Here is an example script, that you can adapt to your needs:

#!/bin/bash

VIRTUALENV="/path/to/turbogears/environment"
PROJECT="/path/to/my/MyProject"
PACKAGE="mypackage"

# activate environment
source "$VIRTUALENV/bin/activate"

if which start-$PACKAGE 2>/dev/null; then
    exec start-$PACKAGE "$@"
else
    cd "$PROJECT"
    exec python start-$PACKAGE.py "$@"
fi

Method Two: Using pydistutils.cfg

Warning

Warning: Setting up things as explained in this section will affect all future installations of Python packages through distutils or easy_install, i.e. they will be installed under your home directory as well. If you don’t want this, remove or rename the .pydistutils.cfg file after installing TurboGears.

Setting up Installation Locations

When you install Python packages either with easy_install or by running “python setup.py install” from the package distribution, the procedure will look for a per-user configuration file under the path ~/.pydistutils.cfg (the path is different on Windows, but that does not concern us here).

You may specify several options in this configuration file, which will affect the install locations. You can use these to point to a Python library directory below your home directory. We recommend the following locations:

Mac OS X

Packages:	~/Library/Python/X.Y/lib
Scripts:	~/bin
Data:	~/Library/Python/X.Y/lib
C Headers:	~/Library/Python/X.Y/include

Unix/Linux

Packages:	~/lib/pythonX.Y
Scripts:	~/bin
Data:	~/lib/pythonX.Y
C Headers:	~/include/pythonX.Y

Here is an example for the contents of a .pydistutils.cfg file for a Linux system:

[install]
install_lib = ~/lib/python$py_version_short/
install_data = ~/lib/python$py_version_short/
install_headers = ~/include/python$py_version_short/
install_scripts = ~/bin

The $py_version_short placeholder will get replaced with the version of the Python interpreter, which you use to run the installation command (omitting anything behind the minor version number, e.g. 2.5). Make sure you create all installation directories before proceeding.

You can find out the complete list of options for any distutils command or easy_install using the –help option, e.g.:

$ python setup.py <command> --help

or:

$ easy_install --help

Also, see “References” below for a link to the distutils documentation.

Setting PYTHONPATH

Next, you must make sure, that the Python interpreter will find the packages in your library directory. To check the current Python module search path, do:

$ python -c "import sys; print sys.path"

If your library directory is not included in the output, you have to set the PYTHONPATH environment variable, for example:

$ export PYTHONPATH="$HOME/lib/python2.5"

(Substitute 2.5 with the appropriate version number for your Python installation.)

To make this setting permanent, add the line above (without the leading $) to your ~/.profile or ~/.bash_profile file. Please also check your system documentation on how to make environment variable settings permanent.

Setting PATH

Make sure that the install location for Python scripts is on your command search path, by adding it to the PATH environment variable:

$ export PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH"

Make this setting permanent the same way you did for the PYTHONPATH variable.

Installing TurboGears

Finally, install TurboGears as usual by downloading [1] & running tgsetup.py:

$ wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/turbogears1/files/1.0/tgsetup.py
$ python tgsetup.py --script-dir=$HOME/bin

References

• Installing Python Modules from the standard Python documentation, has a section about Alternate Installation and Distutils configuration files.
• The easy_install documentation explains simple ways to get easy_install to install in a variety of locations.