Django Installation for Mac

Overview

These installation instructions are Mac-specific!

An installation script for Windows is located here.

The commands below must be done one at a time. Make sure each one is successful before continuing to the next step. Please do not get hung up on version numbers. Use the latest version for any package you install!

Django Pre-requisites: Developer Tools and Homebrew

Open the Terminal, and do the following commands to install the pre-requisites for the Django libraries.

You should only need to do each of these commands once.

(You do not need to type the comments! These are here to explain what we’re doing on each line.)

# install the pre-requisites: developer tools
sudo rm -rf /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools xcode-select --install

# install homebrew, an installation manager for some of the packages we
# need to install
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install.sh)"

# this command will add brew to your system path:
echo 'eval "$(/usr/local/bin/brew shellenv)"' >> ~/.zprofile eval "$(/usr/local/bin/brew shellenv)"

Note: if you get an error that brew is not found: you will need to discover where it was installed. Try this command:

which brew

It will show you the path in which the brew application is installed, for example: /opt/homebrew/bin/brew. Use that directory path.

For good measure, let’s have brew install a version of python and pipenv:

brew install python
brew install pipenv

Django Installation

We are creating a directory called django on the Desktop (for convenience). You may use another location, but you need to remember what it is.

# create a django directory on the desktop, and change into that
# directory.
mkdir ~/Desktop/django 
cd ~/Desktop/django

# create virtual environment, install django, and start virtual
# environment shell
pipenv install django 
pipenv shell

Starting a New Django Project

The following Terminal commands are used to start a new Django project. This assumes you have already changed into the django directory and started the virtual environment (see above).

You should only need to start the project once (for the entire semester/course)

You must call your project cs412, because that is the name that the configuration file expects. You MUST have a trailing period at the end of the diang-admin startproject line.

# create the django project in the current directory
django-admin startproject cs412 .

Running the Django Development Server

The following Terminal commands are used to start the virtual environment (pipenv shell) run the Django server.

You will need to do these every time you open a new Terminal window. You will always need to start the development server before you can test anything in a web browser.

(You do not need to type the comments!)

# change into the django directory
cd ~/Desktop/django

# start the virtual environment shell
pipenv shell

# run the django development server
python manage.py runserver

Did the installation work? You should seem some lines like this:

Starting development server at http://127.0.0.1:8000/ 
Quit the server with CONTROL-C.

Test it by opening a browser to http://127.0.0.1:8000/.

If it worked, you will see a “Welcome to Django” page:

To stop the development server, use the keyboard sequence CONTROL-C.

Making and Applying Migrations

The following Terminal commands are used to make and apply database changes to the Django development environment. This assumes you have already changed into the django directory and started the virtual environment (see above). You will need to do this when changes have been made to the database models (this will be explained in part 2 of our course).

(You do not need to type the comments!)

# create the migrations: the updates to the database models
python manage.py makemigrations

# apply the migrations
python manage.py migrate

Do you have suggestions for improving these instructions?

Please share them with Aaron.

[cs_people]: http://cs-people.bu.edu [putty]: https://www.putty.org/ [django_running]: ../resources/django_running.png [installation_mac]: