Quick install guide

Before you can learn Django, you'll need to install it first. Here is a simple and minimal installation of Django that'll work through the introduction.

Install Python

Django is a Python Web framework, so Python installation is required.

You may need to know What Python version can be used with Django?.

To check Python version, you can just simply type python or python3 from your shell.

Database

Python includes a lightweight database called SQLite. If you want to use a "larger" database, such as MySQL or Oracle, then you need to install them.

Install Django

There are three easy ways to install Django:

• Install an official release
• Install a version of Django provided by the operating system distribution
• Install the latest development version

Installing an official release with pip

This is the recommended way to install Django.

1. Install pip.
2. Take a look at virtualenv and virtualenvwrapper
3. pip install Django

Install pip

This step can be upgrade pip because pip is already installed with the python installation or Virtual Environment.

To upgrade pip, just run:

pip install  -U pip
# or
pip install --upgrade pp

And here is a quick start for pip.

Virtualenv and Virtualenvwrapper

These tools provide isolated Python environments, which are more practical than installing packages systemwide.

Install virtualenv

Install virtualenv can be easily using:

pip install virtualenv

Usage

Virtualenv has one basic command:

$ virtualenv ENV

This command create a new virtual environment and ENV is the directory to place the new virtual environment.

• ENV/lib/ and ENV/include/ containing supporting library files for python environment. Packages installed in this environment will live under ENV/lib/pythonX.X/site-packages/.
• ENV/bin/ includes executables live. If you want your python script using a virtualenv's python, you can add #! /path/to/ENV/bin/python to your script.
• pip and setuptools are installed.

Activate script

In directory /ENV/bin/, run:

$ source activate

This will change the $PATH so its first entry is the virtualenv's bin/ directory.

This also modify the shell prompt to indicate which environment is currently active.

To undo these changes, just run:

$ deactivate

Removing an Environment

To remove a virtual environment, just deactivate it and delete the environment folder.

Useful options

--system-site-packages makes the virtual environment to inherit packages from global site-packages directory (i.e. /usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages)

--python=/path/to/python use the specific python version.

virtualenvwrapper

Virtualenvwrapper is a tool to organize all of your virtual environments in one place.

Installation

$ pip install virtualenvwrapper

The default work on home is ~/.virtualenvs/

create env

source /usr/local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh
# create new env
mkvirtualenv env1
# delete env
rmvirtualenv env1
# change to env
workon env1

Install the development version

git clone https://github.com/django/django.git
pip install -e django/