Django application installation

Question

Dear Djangonauts,

I'm still busy with my Django learning adventure. In another post I asked about how to structure a Django project and applications using buildout. In the details of doing this arose another issue, simply installing 3rd party Django applications using either easy_install or setup.py. My question is, where should you install a Django application? If looking at Django documentation, one would think to put a Django application inside the project folder. But if your Django application is an egg (a mystifying term in my opinion) and you use easy_install without option '-b' (build-directory) the application will be installed into your current python site-packages directory. Using option '-b' will put a copy of the application in your directory, but still will install it in your current site-packages directory. Then there are other options like --install-dir and prefix. Also how should installation happen when using setup.py which have similar options as buid-directory, install-dir, and prefix?

Is there a 'good practice' standard for installing 3rd party Django applications into a Django project?

Thank a lot,

Todd

Answer 1

They usually aren't installed directly into the project. They're either installed into the system's site-packages/ directory, or in the virtualenv's site-packages/ directory, or in some other well-defined place that the sysadmin has set for this purpose.

Answer 2

This is where virtualenv comes into its own. It basically enables a project-specific site_packages directory, where you can install all the third-party applications that relate to your project. I'd definitely recommend it.