Django Deployment: Polls Tutorial: Advanced Tutorial: How to write reuseable apps

[Kern Goretzky]

New to Django. I have some Python programming experience (beginner-intermediate). I was taking the Django Polls tutorial and can't resolve deployment problem in the Advanced Tutorial: How to write reuseable apps: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.9/intro/reusable-apps/

In the Using Your Own Package section, I have a problem when I pip install --user django-polls/dist/django-polls-0.1.tar.gz. I get this response:

"Requirement 'django-polls/dist/django-polls-0.1.tar.gz' looks like a filename, but the file does not exist."

I'm using a Windows 10 computer and I noticed that the package extension is .zip not .tar.gz

I did pip install --user django-polls/dist/django-polls-0.1.zip (changed the extension to .zip) but had the same response:

"Requirement 'django-polls/dist/django-polls-0.1.zip' looks like a filename, but the file does not exist."

I am doing the pip install from the dist directory. In trying to figure out the source of the problem, I have some suspects:

1. When I saveed the README.rst file in Spyder I selected the web pages (.css .htm .html) option but changed the extension to .rst. In file explore under type, it says RST File, so I thought I did this correctly. Otherwise I'm not sure what program to use to create an .rst file.

2. I couldn't figure out what program creates a .in file type. My MANIFEST.in file is a text document.

3. Why was a .zip file created for the package instead of a .tar.gz file?

4. My LICENSE file is an .html doc. Does that matter?

5. Should I have created a virtual environment? Does python manage.py startapp polls from the first part of the tutorial create a virtual environment.

I cut and pasted all of the code from the tutorial, so unless the tutorial has a typo I think the code is probably not the problem. I also have Anacondo installed if that makes a difference.

This is my first deployment so please dumb-down the explanations if possible. Thank you.