Pinax on App Engine

[Josh Steiner]

Hey all,

I'm starting to look into porting Pinax to run on top of App Engine
for a website I'd plan to launch this summer. More accurately, I'll
be focusing first on porting the subset of Pinax apps that I need for
my site.

I wanted to reach out and see if anyone else either is planning on
doing this, or has already started. If so, maybe we can collaborate?
It seems like a big task, but one well made for splitting out amongst
several developers since everything is so awesomely modular.

Also, once I start making code changes would it be possible to have my
branch of the codebase hosted on the main pinax github? If not, I can
go ahead and setup a separate project for this, but ideally I'd like
to keep this within the fold of the main Pinax project. I'd also like
to use the Pinax wiki to track/document progress.

I'm pretty new to both Django and Pinax, so it may be a bit slow going
at first, but I'm really loving the 0.7beta1 site I've been messing
around with on my dev box, so I'd really like to use this for my
project.

-Josh

[dartdog]

I love the thought, my skills are somewhat negligible, so I'm not much
help, but a cheerleader and a likely tester/documenter,, I suggest
that you pay close attention to app-engine patch and co-operate with
that project and there may be some help there as well, if it is
possible to bring that into the fold it would be awesome, There are a
few short threads discussing that (some of which I started). Waldemar
Kornewald (the app-engine patch developer) has numerous comments in
Django both asking for help and giving it. Try reaching out to him.
Good luck, I'll keep an eye out for progress.

[evangineer]

On Apr 17, 1:20 am, Josh Steiner <vitrio...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I'm starting to look into porting Pinax to run on top of App Engine
> for a website I'd plan to launch this summer.  More accurately, I'll
> be focusing first on porting the subset of Pinax apps that I need for
> my site.
>

Is the intention to eventually produce a version of Pinax that can
run
both on and off App Engine?

Regards,
Mamading.

[Josh Steiner]

evangineer -- That would be the best case senario of course, but since
the Google App Engine's (GAE) DataStore is so completely different
that a traditional Relational DB, which most Django apps are pretty
tied too, chances are it won't be as clear cut as that. I've been
giving some thought to ways of reducing the amount of code that needs
to fork so that the GAE version would stay in lockstep with the
mainline Pinax tree. But until I get some more headway on the porting
effort I'm not really going to be sure how likely that will be.

dartdog -- thanks for the cheerleading, definitely nice to see others
would be interested in the idea. I've looked (at a surface level
mostly) at both "App-Engine Patch" and "Google App Engine Helper for
Django", and at first pass I'm a little more interested in the latter,
mostly because he has tried to (to a limited degree) support Django
Model's on top of the GAE DataStore. I bet for a lot of Pinax apps
that have simplistic DB schemas it might work, but once again, until
I'll a little deeper into the code I'm not sure. I will definitely be
taking a close look at both to see what can be of best use to the
project.

-Josh

[evangineer]

On Apr 19, 4:45 am, Josh Steiner <vitrio...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I've been
> giving some thought to ways of reducing the amount of code that needs
> to fork so that the GAE version would stay in lockstep with the
> mainline Pinax tree.  But until I get some more headway on the porting
> effort I'm not really going to be sure how likely that will be.
>

Hmm, I saw this last night & thought it might be relevant.

Making Django Apps Run On and Off GAE
http://tinyurl.com/cewf27

Regards,
Mamading

[dartdog]

FWIW, I'm starting to play around a bit see if "just" the Blog
component of Pinax can be ported to App-engine. I plan to do it on the
App-engine patch base, as the approaches and frameworks at least
appear to be complementary and if successful then more can be done to
bring Pinax reusable apps to App-engine.
Initially I plan to disable as much prerequisites at possible, which I
hope will leave just the basic post and then the retrieve components..
(no comments at 1st!!)
Depending on what I learn in the process, then I'll be able to access
practicality of continuation.

Thoughts appreciated!!

[dartdog]

The author of the App engine Patch has just announced that he plans to
move/emulate the whole Django model class to App-engine -patch
I have made fair progress moving the Pinax blog model to App-engine
patch, hope to have more to report soon.

These moves should allow Pinax to run in a pretty complete manner on
App-engine.

[evangineer]

That's good news and of great interest to me. More info about the
Django App Engine port available here:
http://groups.google.com/group/django-developers/browse_thread/thread/516626d18f6f3fca

Regards,
Mamading

[@ungerik]

I am also interested in Pinax on GAE, but have to get my stuff running
without GAE first.
Will join the GEA troops probably in a few weeks - put my name on the
list.

-Erik <ma...@ungerik.net>

[dartdog]

For a complete discription of app-engine patch see here: Note that the
most compete (&current) version is in the bit bucket repo
http://code.google.com/p/app-engine-patch/

> -Erik <m...@ungerik.net>