General required packages are:

• Python 2.7
• MySQL server
• MySQL client
• Python development environment (for building Python modules)

The required Python packages are listed in requirements.txt; install with pip. However, you probably need only install these two:

• Django
• beautifulsoup4

For MySQL-python, you may want to use your distribution's Python MySQLdb package. If you want to install that with pip, you'll need the MySQL client development libraries on your system, and you may need to upgrade your "distribute" Python package first as well.

Quick instructions for a development server, subject to change:

1. Go to rlc/. This might be a little confusing because the repository is also named rlc, so you'll have rlc/rlc in your path.

   cd rlc
   

2. Create the site's key with this command:

   python genkey.py
   

3. Start the mysql client and create a database. You can use any name that you like; the example below uses the name "rlc":

   mysql> CREATE DATABASE rlc
          DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8
          DEFAULT COLLATE utf8_general_ci;  
   

   It's important that you specify the character encoding at the beginning like this.

4. Copy siteconfig.py.dist to siteconfig.py, edit to reflect the DB configuration that you just created. The user you choose must have read/write access to the database you created above.

   You do not need to configure STATIC_ROOT if you'll be running the dev server only.

5. Go back to the main repository directory.

   cd ..
   

6. Create the initial unpopulated database tables with this command:

   python manage.py syncdb  
   

   During the process, you'll be asked if you'd like to create a superuser. Create one for yourself.

7. Create the initial groups and data:

   ./init_data
   

8. Start a development server with:

   python manage.py runserver
   

   Django will provide you with a URL where you can access your development site.

9. With your browser, go to that URL. Log in with the superuser that you created.

10. In that development site, go to the administrative interface at /admin/, and add yourself to the "Editor" group (at least).

11. Go back to the root URL; verify that you can access that index. There should be a few documents there.

Note that if the data models are changed during development, and you update your repository, you won't automatically pick up new tables. You must run the syncdb command shown above to create them.

However, syncdb does not overwrite existing tables, so if a model changes, you'll need to manually delete any old tables first. It might be easier just to create a new database, syncdb, and reload the initial data for development servers (though it is a bit of a pain to recreate your own user). I'm working on making this process smoother.