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Getting Your Own python-dev Tracker

This page describes how to setup a roundup tracker instance that works exactly as the tracker for python-dev on http://bugs.python.org. The intended audience is people that want to help out with the tracker, developing new features etc.

Requirements

Installing roundup

For python-dev, we use a slightly modified version of Roundup which has some features that are not yet in the core Roundup. To keep track of the changes, we keep a vendor branch of roundup.

Check out /tracker/roundup-src from the python subversion repository as documented on http://python.org/dev/tools/. For example, here's how to do anonymous checkout:

  svn co http://svn.python.org/projects/tracker/roundup-src

Install this roundup somewhere by running setup.py

  cd roundup-src
  python setup.py install --prefix /opt/tracker-roundup/

Install and configure PostgreSQL

For the python-dev tracker instance we use PostgreSQL as backend database. Roundup has support for many different databases for backend (anydbm, metakit, MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite...), but for the python-dev instance, PostgreSQL was selected as it has the best performance for large installations. Also, for performance reasons, there is at least one place in the python-dev instance that has a hardcoded dependency on the backend being an SQL-based one, so you do need PostgreSQL even for development work (another SQL-based backend might work, but this has not been tested). I recommend that you run postgreSQL to make your development environment behave exactly like the environment the real tracker runs in.

Details on how to install PostgreSQL is outside the scope of this Wiki Page. Both version 7.4 and 8.1 of PostgreSQL has been tested without any known problems. It has been reported that 8.2 works well. It's necessary to apply a patch for 8.3 compatibility.

Access configuration of postgresql can be tricky. You need to make sure that the user you're running roundup as (your unix/windows user) has access to the postgresql database you intend to use for roundup, as the postgresql user you've configured in roundup's configuration.

For a development environment with no demands on security, the easiest way to configure this is probably to allow all users to connect as any database user as long as the request originates from the local host. This can be accomplished by the following lines in pg_hba.conf:

local   all         all                                             trust
host    all         all         127.0.0.1         255.255.255.255   trust

PLEASE NOTE: This is not a secure configuration on a multi-user machine.

After the change in pg_hba.conf, reload your postgreSQL database to make sure it knows about your new access configuration. Something similar to /etc/init.d/postgresql reload should do the trick on Unix-like platforms.

Create a database user that is allowed to create databases. This user will be used when roundup connects to the database.

# psql -U postgres
postgres=# create user roundup;
postgres=# alter user roundup with createdb;

Installing psycopg or psycopg2

You need to install psycopg or psycopg2. Download it from http://www.initd.org, as pre-packaged versions have been reported to cause problems.

Checkout spambayes_integration

Even if you don't intend to use the SpamBayes detector you must still check out the spambayes_integration instance. If you do intend to use it, you will need to also install SpamBayes proper and configure it appropriately (see below).

  svn co http://svn.python.org/projects/tracker/instances/spambayes_integration

Checkout and Configure your Development Roundup Instance

The python-dev tracker instance is version-controlled with subversion, and resides in the python subversion repository.

  svn co http://svn.python.org/projects/tracker/instances/python-dev

Keep in mind that the python-dev instance has relative symlinks to ../../spambayes_integration/[...], so if your directory layout is different you have to update these links:

extensions/spambayes.py -> ../../spambayes_integration/extensions/spambayes.py

detectors/spambayes.py -> ../../spambayes_integration/detectors/spambayes.py

Now enter the python-dev directory, and create the 'db' directory (not in svn as it's just to much fuzz to keep it there - every time you run roundup-admin init it is removed and recreated, confusing svn who wants to keep its .svn directory intact), as well as the db/backend_name file which decides which backend (i.e. database type) to use:

cd python-dev
mkdir db
echo postgresql > db/backend_name

Copy python-dev/config.ini.template into config.ini, and modify it according to your site. Pay special attention to settings marked with NO DEFAULT. However, if you've configure your PostgreSQL as above, most settings should be OK.

If you need to do development on the busybody or tellteam detectors, copy detectors/config.ini.template into detectors/config.ini, and adjust the e-mail addresses accordingly. The CIA.vc detector sends emails about issue changes and in on by default. Disable it by adding a return to its init() function (detectors/cia.py):

 def init(db):
     return # <--
     db.issue.react('create', sendcia)
     db.issue.react('set', sendcia)

Initialize your roundup instance:

/opt/tracker-roundup/bin/roundup-admin -i <your python-dev directory> init

Provide a password for the 'admin' user when asked for.

Start your roundup instance:

/opt/tracker-roundup/bin/roundup-server -p 9999 python-dev=<your python-dev directory>

You should now be able to browse http://localhost:9999/python-dev/ and get a roundup instance that looks just like http://bugs.python.org, except for some missing new values for fields like Stages and Keywords.

The IDs for values in a given field might be different from those in the Python Tracker. This should only be a problem if you try to import CSV files from one tracker into the other.

SpamBayes Setup

If you intend to use the SpamBayes detector to weed out spam from your tracker you will need to install it and start an instance of its core_server application. Briefly:

Devote a directory to it, e.g.:

 SBDIR=/usr/local/spambayes/core_server  # or whatever...
 mkdir -p $SBDIR

Create an INI file:

 cd $SBDIR
 cat > bayescustomize.ini <<EOF
[globals]
verbose:False

[Headers]
include_evidence:True
include_score:True

[Tokenizer]
record_header_absence:True
summarize_email_prefixes:True
summarize_email_suffixes:True
mine_received_headers:True
x-pick_apart_urls:True
x-fancy_url_recognition:False
x-lookup_ip:True
lookup_ip_cache:$SBDIR/dnscache.pck
max_image_size:100000
crack_image_cache:$SBDIR/imagecache.pck

crack_images:True
image_size:True
ocr_engine:gocr
[Classifier]
use_bigrams:False

[Categorization]
ham_cutoff:0.2
spam_cutoff:0.85

[Storage]
persistent_storage_file:$SBDIR/hammie.db
persistent_use_database:pickle
messageinfo_storage_file:$SBDIR/messageinfo.fs

[html_ui]
display_score:True
EOF

Finally, run it:

 BAYESCUSTOMIZE=$SBDIR/bayescustomize.ini core_server.py -m XMLRPCPlugin

Common Problems

Incomplete/Missing !SpamBayes setup

In your config.ini file set spambayes_uri to a syntactically valid, but nonexistent URI, e.g.:

    spambayes_uri = "http://localhost:9999/nobodyhere"

Problematic detectors may be disabled by returning from their init() function, as was the case of detectors/audit2to3.py (no longer present). Note that this would be a temporary solution before a graceful fix became available. Reporting issues with local instances is the best way help solving the problem.

Resources for Tracker Development

Getting Help

Subscribe to and ask your question on the tracker-discuss mailing list. See http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tracker-discuss

Since the Python Tracker is a slightly modified version of Roundup, both Roundup's Documentation and issue tracker contain relevant information about how the Python Tracker works and problems one might find working with its code.

The Meta Tracker

A Meta Tracker is available for handling bugs and features requests for the Python Tracker.

Learn more About the Importer(s)

http://svn.python.org/projects/tracker/importer/README.rst has some information about the importer(s) written to convert sourceforge data into roundup data.


CategoryTracker

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