How to install Buildout—a tool for building software

First, let us have a look at some background on Buildout.

You do not have to use easy_install or PIP to install Buildout as we are about to do. Doing so will cause Buildout to be installed on your system Python's site-packages directory; the choice is yours.

The Zope community provides a bootstrap file for creating isolated Buildout environments outside site-packages: http://svn.zope.org/repos/main/zc.buildout/trunk/bootstrap/bootstrap.py.

If you download and execute this file, it will create a buildout in the current working directory.

We will use that method almost exclusively later, but for now, let us install Buildout globally (that is in the system Python's site-packages directory).

Also, let us try using PIP instead of easy_install this time (since we have just installed PIP).

Installing Buildout on Mac OS X

To install Buildout using PIP, open Finder | Applications | Utilities | Terminal and type:

$ sudo pip install zc.buildout

Tip

Namespace packages

Note that the package name of Buildout is zc.buildout, which indicates it is a "namespace package". To read more about this topic, visit: http://docs.python.org/tutorial/modules.html#packages.

You should see:

If you are prompted for a password, type your Mac OS X account password.

To verify that Buildout works, type:

$ buildout

Assuming you are not in a directory with a buildout.cfg file, you should see:

We have just finished demonstrating how to install and test Buildout on Mac OS X.

Installing Buildout on Windows 7

To install Buildout, select Start | All Programs | Accessories | Command Prompt and type:

$ pip install zc.buildout

You should see:

To verify that Buildout works, type:

$ buildout

We have just finished demonstrating how to install and test Buildout on Windows.

Installing Buildout on Ubuntu Linux

To install Buildout, open Applications | Accessories | Terminal and type:

$ sudo pip install zc.buildout

You should see:

To verify that Buildout works, type:

$ buildout

You should see:

We have just finished demonstrating how to install and test Buildout on Ubuntu Linux.