For troggle itself, you need a linux machine. We all use Debian or Debian-derived machines (Debian itself, Ubuntu, Xubuntu etc.) but other forms of linux may work. Running Debian or Ubuntu under WSL on Windows 10 or 11 works fine.
If you want to work on the troggle source code and be able to commit to the server git repo, your account will need to be added to the troggle project members list. Contact wookey at wookware dot org to get this set up.
Make sure you are familiar with the debugging tools already built into troggle. You may not need to write any new software for what you need to do. Look at the tools and reports listed on the Troggle Control Panel page (needs 'expoadmin' login password.)
Maybe what you need is simply some fixes or workarounds in the imported data files, not in the python code.
If you don't already know how to do this, then you should probably not be attempting to work on the troggle code. But in case you are an experienced linux user who has always had someone else set up the system for them, then Ubuntu is the easiest and more forgiving to install, either directly on the computer or inside WSL on Windows. Ubuntu installs python and various essential python dev tools by default.
The server is running fairly old, stable releases of Debian and Django, but you will probably want Ubuntu-24.04 which is compatible.
Before you do anything else, get yourself set up with a key-pair to access the software on the expo server properly.
You need to already know really quite a lot about what troggle does, and how it is used in practice. Also you will have installed git and set up the key-pair as documented in your bulk update laptop configuration. In particular read the information there about VS code and git.
You can download the code without having a key-pair like this:
mkdir ~/expo
cd ~/expo
git clone http://expo.survex.com/repositories/troggle/.git trog-tempmv ~/expo/trog-temp/_deploy/wsl/*.sh ~/expo
cd ~/expo
chmod +x *.sh
rm -fr trog-tempThis page is a work in progess. Text will be moved here from
expo.survex.com/repositories/troggle/.git/tree/README
This is up to you of course, but a suggested structure is like this ("~" means your own user home folder, e.g. /home/philip/):
Do familiarise yourself with the directory structure on the expo server, which we will be duplicating (partly) as docmented in The Expo Server. We are not here doing a full install of all the software and scripts on the server, just the minimum to run, test and debug troggle on Django.
There are two scripts in the troggle folder which will do semi-automatically what is described below. Have a look at
You will run os-trog24.04.sh just once to install all the basics,and you will run venv-trog.sh just once initially.
We have two configurations for the virtual environment: 'dev' which uses the latest python and Django for speed, and 'server' which mimics the versions currently running on the server. [In December 2024 Django is 5 releases ahead of the version on the server (5.1 versus 3.2). Each has a list of ancilliary packages with the appropriate versions in dev.toml and server.toml.] venv-trog.sh deals with all this python-specific stuff, libraries and Django plug-ins.
os-trog.sh takes a few minutes: it installs the subset of /expofiles/ you need to work with troggle. If you now want to install survex, therion etc. then run os-survey.sh, and go away for an hour, as these drag in a huge number of dependencies and installs all of /expofiles/ except the photos and Martin's mapapp.
Yes, it is true that this would greatly speed up on-boarding new programmers. Or podman.
But there is the significant danger that containers would get copied around and deployed without being properly cleaned up: resulting in configuration drift and a snowflake server situation. File permissions are a big issue.
We should do both: create a Docker or Podman system for getting started, then transition programmers to script-based or recipe-based provisioning so that systems are rebuilt cleanly. CUYC (who also use Django) have a bash script which sets up a new django development system. We should copy that in the first instance. Alas, we haven't got around to doing any of this yet. However uv now makes everything much, much simpler than when were were using pip.
Set up the key-exchange first. You need to be able to ssh into the server to run this next bit.
On a new machine you need to configure your git identity. If your name is Anathema Device,then:
git config --global user.email "anathema.device@example.com"
git config --global user.name "Anathema Device"
git config --global pull.rebase true
In your home folder run
~$ bash os-trog24.04.sh
you will hve this in your troggle folder is you have copied it from _deploy (see instructions above) or you can copy it from the .git repo online to get hold of it. Run it in /home/anathema/expo and it will clone all the repositories into it after installing the software you need. It installs some of expofiles but not expofiles/photos/.
You absolutely need this so that you can upload your edited code to the git repo on the server. And currently the initial download and setup requires it too.
Follow this link to register a key with the expo server to get git access if you have not already cloned the :troggle: repo.
On WSL you will need to check that the key that you paired is actually loaded:
chmod 700 ~/.ssh/*
eval `ssh-agent`
ssh-add ~/.ssh/anathema@deviceIf you do not have a local copy of the 40GB /expofiles/, don't worry. Later on we can set 'EXPOFILESREMOTE = True' in the localsettings.py file and your test system will use the live expofiles on expo.survex.com (read only).
If you do have 'EXPOFILESREMOTE = True' then the forms which upload scans and photos to the server will not work as you expect. They will upload to your local machine, but read the status of the folders from expo.survex.com. So you will get confusing and apparently inconsistent behaviour: e.g. you will upload a file but then be unable to see it.
For development, you mostly only need a local copy of the wallets and scanned survey notes and sketches in expofiles/surveyscans which is less than 5GB.
You can, if you like, have the expo photo archive collection somewhere else, not inside expofiles, on a troggle development machine. To do this set the PHOTOS_ROOT appropriately in troggle/localsettings.py. By default it is PHOTOS_ROOT = EXPOFILES / 'photos'. This is handy if you want everything else in expofiles in your Linux home drive for speed, but don't care about speed for the 29GB of photos which can sit on an SDdrive.
We do not install Django at the system level using sudo apt install django. We will be installing two variants of Django and python in a separate virtual environment (a 'venv'); not in the main linux system. The reasons why are indicated in the cartoon to the right and explained in "python dependency management is a dumpster fire".
To prevent compatibility issues when deploying our code, we test using the same libraries that run on expo.survex.com. In December 2024 expo.survex.com uses Python 3.11.2 and Django 3.2. However on our laptops we develop with Python 3.13 and Django 5 to get plenty of warning of future incompatibilities. Additionally, these newer versions are faster.
Do this:
cd ~/expo/troggle
uv sync
source .venv/bin/activate
To swap to the server mimic environment, do:
deactivate
cd ~/expo/troggle
cp server.toml pyproject.toml
uv sync
source .venv/bin/activate
deactivate
cd ~/expo/troggle
cp dev.toml pyproject.toml
uv sync
source .venv/bin/activate
(troggle) philip@Mohawk:~/expo/troggle$ cp dev.toml pyproject.toml
(troggle) philip@Mohawk:~/expo/troggle$ uv sync
Using CPython 3.13.1
Removed virtual environment at: .venv
Creating virtual environment at: .venv
Resolved 11 packages in 25ms
Installed 9 packages in 545ms
+ asgiref==3.8.1
+ beautifulsoup4==4.12.3
+ coverage==7.6.9
+ django==5.1.4
+ piexif==1.1.3
+ pillow==11.0.0
+ soupsieve==2.6
+ sqlparse==0.5.3
+ unidecode==1.3.8This all checks that the installation has completed properly.
django-adminThe first line django-admin will complain that it has not got a SETTINGS file, but that's fine. See django-admin initial output for what you should expect to see at this point. If it crashes though, you have not managed to install the software completely. If you get an error when running
django-admin --versionNow try
python manage.pypython manage.py check -v 3 --tracebackThe most important is the python manage.py check. If this works, then you have installed the software correctly.
The next task is to edit the SETTINGS files to match your machine and folder structure. So find the appropriate copy of the localsettings in /_deploy/ and copy it into the main troggle folder:
cp _deploy/wsl/localsettingsWSL.py localsettings.pyWe have at one time made localsettings in /_deploy/ appropriate for
WARNING: only the WSL (12/2024) and debian (12/2023) variants are in any way current . All the others are so old that they will need serious work to be useable. Copy what you need from WSL and debian variants of localsettings.py
Now edit localsettings.py and insert useful values for EXPOUSERPASS [e.g. cavey:beery], EXPOADMINUSERPASS [e.g. beery:cavey], SECRET_KEY. SECRET_KEY can be anything, it just has to be unique to each installation and invisible to anyone not a developer.
Set EMAIL_HOST and EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD to an email account you control that can send email. Then troggle can email you when some things go wrong. This may mean having to set EMAIL_PORT and MAIL_USE_TLS too (this is not used in troggle currently). Set EXPOUSER_EMAIL and EXPOADMINUSER_EMAIL to your own email address while you are doing software development. All these will be different when troggle is deployed on the public server.
Now you need to edit the following settings in your localsettings.py file to match your development machine, e.g. if you have /expofiles/ mounted on another disc:
FILES = Path('/mnt/f/expofiles/')
EXPOFILES = Path('/mnt/f/expofiles/')All the other settings (drawings, expoweb etc.) will work fine if they are parallel directories to the directory you installed troggle into. The troggle code can find out itself where it is living.
If you do not have a local copy of /expofiles/ (40 GB), you can use the expo server copy if you set:
EXPOFILESREMOTE = TRUENow try this again:
python manage.pyNow:
python -Wall manage.py check python manage.py check -v 3 --tracebackIf you get an error your python sys.path is probably not set correctly yet. Do
python -m siteNow:
python manage.py check -v 3 --deploy?: (security.W001) You do not have 'django.middleware.security.SecurityMiddleware' in your MIDDLEWARE so the SECURE_HSTS_SECONDS, SECURE_CONTENT_TYPE_NOSNIFF, SECURE_BROWSER_XSS_FILTER, and SECURE_SSL_REDIRECT settings will have no effect. ?: (security.W012) SESSION_COOKIE_SECURE is not set to True. Using a secure-only session cookie makes it more difficult for network traffic sniffers to hijack user sessions. ?: (security.W016) You have 'django.middleware.csrf.CsrfViewMiddleware' in your MIDDLEWARE, but you have not set CSRF_COOKIE_SECURE to True. Using a secure-only CSRF cookie makes it more difficult for network traffic sniffers to steal the CSRF token. ?: (security.W018) You should not have DEBUG set to True in deployment.
If you got an error traceback with
python manage.pypython manage.py diffsettingspython manage.py help migrate
python manage.py migrateNow run the test suite:
python manage.py test -v 3 --tracebackThis will run the entire troggle test suite of ~90 tests (it takes only a few seconds).
If you get an error, and you probably will, have a look in the source code of the test, e.g. for this error:
FAIL: test_page_folk (troggle.core.TESTS.tests.PageTests) File "/mnt/c/EXPO/troggle/core/TESTS/tests.py", line 266, in test_page_folk response = self.client.get('/folk/index.htm') wget -O ../expoweb/folk/index.htm expo.survex.com/folk/index.htmpython manage.py test -v 2So do this:
cd ../expoweb/folk python ../scripts/make-folklist.py <folk.csv >index.htm cd ../../troggle
The test suite now tidies up after itself, so there should not be any temporary files left behind or local git commits that you will need to clean up.
The test suite has ~90 tests but does not cover all of what troggle does and does not use any real data. You need to manually test these too, after you have done a full data import:
- http://localhost:8000/pathsreport
- http://localhost:8000/stats
- http://localhost:8000/people (takes a minute or so)
- http://localhost:8000/wallets/year/2019l
- http://localhost:8000/survexfile/caves/
- http://localhost:8000/expofiles/training-info/Idiots guide to accessing expo git.pptx
- http://localhost:8000/1623/291/291
- http://localhost:8000/caves
- ttp://localhost:8000/admin/doc/models/core.expedition/ (admin login required)
- http://localhost:8000/survexfile/204
Nearly half the code deals with importing and parsing data, so you need to test that a full data import works. Run the full data import troggle$ python databaseReset.py reset R000. It should take about 5 minutes to import everything. See Troggle Full Import for what you should expect to see.
You need to know git. Sorry, but there it is. See our git repositories and our git cheat sheet.
The public server uses a MariaDB SQL database and development is usually done using a single-user sqlite database which is a standard Django option.
You will find it very, very useful to see what is going on if you look directly at the data in the database (just a single file in the sqlite case) and browse the data in the tables. This is vital when doing Django migrations between Django versions. A light-weight, simple db browser is DB Browser for SQLite. Connecting directly the the MariaDB database with a control panel or workbench gives even more tools and documentation capabilities. See the troggle server documentation for how to install MariaDB.
When Ubuntu was running on WSL1, it did not use systemctl. Now Ubuntu24.04 does ue systemctl so we should be able to use the same configuration as the server.. [untried as yet].
So under WSL1 you needed specific instructions for installing MariaDB under WSL, do what it says in these instructions first (sudo apt install ...etc.):
Create a new dedicated administrative MariaDB user 'expo' who can access all databases. Log in to the MariaDB command with
sudo mysqland execute these commands:
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES on *.* TO 'expo'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY 'my-secret-password-schwatzmooskogel' WITH GRANT OPTION;
SET PASSWORD FOR expo=PASSWORD('my-secret-password-schwatzmooskogel');
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
QUIT;
and you will need to set this user and password in your localsettings.py:
DATABASE = {
'default': {
'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.mysql', # 'postgresql_psycopg2', 'mysql', 'sqlite3' or 'oracle'.
'NAME' : 'troggle',
'USER' : 'expo',
'PASSWORD' : 'my-secret-password-schwatzmooskogel',
'HOST' : '', # Set to empty string for localhost.
'PORT' : '', # Set to empty string for default.
}
}
That is because we need to install the python tools that talk to mariadb. And while it 'will just work' for python3.9, the standard installed on the distro, with python3.10 it is a bit more work. but note that there is a problem with using python 3.10 in that some bits of pip are not correct and you will get a ImportError: cannot import name 'html5lib' error. TEMPORARILY use this hack from bootstrap:
curl -sS https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py | python3.10 pip install mysql-connector-pythoninstalls the correct pip for python3.10 on Ubuntu. Which works, then
sudo apt-get install python3.10-dev sudo apt install libmariadbclient-dev pip install mariadbwwhich now has installed mariadb python stuff, but seems to have trashed my django installattion. Hmph. And pip.
scp -r expo@expo.survex.com:/usr/share/javascript/ ~/expo/troggle/javascript/