July 1st to July 31st, 31 days and nights of writing Python code.

Julython is a month to try something new, something you have had rolling around in your brain for a while. This could be something simple like 'build the next Google' or 'replace email'. Or you could try something hard like 'build a Django website'. All that matters is that you write it in Python and during the month of July.

Why only 31 days? Why not all year? Well, for one we all have lives and jobs which get in the way. Having a month set aside where we all get together and write code will allow us to rely on each other to keep us on track towards our goals. There will also be a little bit of healthy competition and public flogging to encourge everyone to finish.

Since it is very hard to quantify code we have come up with a simple metric to decide the 'winners' of the competition. The goal is to commit at least once a day for the entire month. If you are working on the next twitter or Instagram you don't have to give your code away. Your commits could be just to a local git or mecurial repository on your machine. Since there are no real prizes you will only be cheating yourself by commiting 30 days of lorem ipsum.

For those on the leader board though you will have to push your commits to a public repository which everyone will clearly be able to see if you're padding your stats.

The site is a work in progress right now and volunteers are welcome. We could use some nice free hosting (hint hint). In the meantime follow us on twitter at @julython.

The site is written in Django and hosted on Appengine. You can use this gist to setup your dev environment to help out.

Pull in the git submodules (Django Debug Toolbar and GAE Django admin/auth helper packages):

$ git submodule update --init

You'll also need the Google App Engine Python SDK for your OS. Once it's set up simply add an existing application from the Julython project root and visit localhost on the port you specified for the development server.

In order to set up Twitter authentication:

1. Register an application with Twitter
2. Ensure you have set a Callback URL for your twitter app. This can be any valid URL, such as your blog URL. Without this setting your twitter app will be locked in 'desktop' mode and you will be unable to authenticate.
3. cp july/secrets.py.template july/secrets.py
4. Open july/secrets.py and add the consumer key and secret provided by Twitter for your app.

In order to maintain internationalization (i18n) support, please try to make sure and run the following command after changing any translated text:

$ django-admin.py makemessages

If you can, edit the accompanying message files (you'll find them in july/locale with an extension of .po), then run:

$ django-admin.py compilemessages

Ping the following developers in your pull request or commit message if you'd like to have new strings translated:

• locale/ja: modocache
• locale/ro: @florinm