making apps, making webs.

This post is a review, a tutorial, and a howto - for and about buildout - a software development tool for the python language.

This document aims to answer the question... "buildout? WTF?".

In short: buildout automates python project building. Buildout does everything needed to get your application in a state for running in its own sandbox.
Super quick start instructions for using buildout...get the source from http://pypi.python.org/pypi/zc.buildoutMake a new directory for your project, then copy the bootstrap/bootstrap.py file out of the zc.buildout source into your new project directorycreate a "buildout.cfg" file to go with the bootstrap.py file. Here is a simple one for your package called "YOURPACKAGENAME":
[buildout]
parts = test py
develop = .

[test]
recipe = zc.recipe.testrunner
eggs = YOURPACKAGENAME
Run "python bootstrap.py" in your empty project directory(with the buildout.cfg file in there).  This will get buildout locally into your sandbox…

The Google Summer of Code(gsoc) has started, and students have officially begun their work this week.

Already design, and code are starting to appear from them.

Here are the pygame related projects, and their blogs:

Zhang Fan, "minz", blog:
physics stuff

Zhang Fan went through the earth quake in China, but luckily him and his family are ok. Zhang has been studying various physics libraries, algorithms and code. As well he has begun work in a separate branch. So hopefully his work will then be merged in at a later time after his project. You can view his branch here:
physics branch


Nicholas Dudfield, "akalias", blog:
tests for pygame

Nicholas's test work is going into the pygame trunk, and he has been working on some tools to help generate most of the test bodies. So this way we will be able to see the number of tests needed to implement. As well he began to write some tests for some parts of pygame that need more tests for the pygame 1.8.1 release(coming soon).

Nir…