I wrote a Python script for automating the steps required to setup a web project environment on my local dev machine that runs on Ubuntu. Called it pywst: Python, Web, Svn, Trac. That's the best I could do, sorry :P

The main steps for setting up a new project are:

• Create a virtual host
• Add it to /etc/hosts
• Enable the virtual host
• Import the new project to the SVN repository
• Checkout the project to /var/www
• Create a TRAC environment for the project
• Restart Apache

After these steps I have http://projectName.lh/ which points to /var/www/projectName/public/, SVN repo under http://localhost/repos/projectName/ and the TRAC environment under http://localhost/trac/projectName/.

As I have this ability to forget things, I always forget a step or 2 of this process. Thus, I wrote pywst (note, this is a txt file, to use it, save it to your HDD and rename it to pywst.py). It's not the best and nicest Python script ever wrote, but gets the job done. All that is need to be done to setup a project with pywst is:

sudo ./pywst.py projectName

2 things are required: to run it with sudo powers and to provide a name for the project.

Future improvements

The first, and the most important is to finish the rollback() method. Now, it only exits pywst when an error occurs, but it should undo all the steps made prior to the error.

Second, to make it work on other distros, not only on Ubuntu. That would require for me getting those other distros, set them up, look where they store Apache and stuff, where's the default document root, etc. Hmm... This will take a while :)

Third, support PHP frameworks - Zend Framework, CodeIgniter and CakePHP — ZF is a must :P Under support I mean to create the basic file structure for them automagically.

Cheers!

A few days ago, I found a really great place, full of excellent math and programming problems: Project Euler.

Project Euler is a series of challenging mathematical/computer programming problems that will require more than just mathematical insights to solve. Although mathematics will help you arrive at elegant and efficient methods, the use of a computer and programming skills will be required to solve most problems.

I was long looking for this kind of place, to get my brain do some serious thinking :) It's a great way to improve logic and math/programming skills.

The problems can be solved by using any programming language, so as I just started learning Python, thought that this is a great way to start with it. As I suck more in math than in programming, my solutions are brute-forced, but I always go back to the explanation of the problem (can be viewed only after you gave the right answer to the problem), to understand the math behind the problem.

There are currently 214 problems and I'm on number 6 right now. If you into this kind of stuff, be sure to check it out, it's a lot of fun :)

Happy hacking!