debian_nm2

Debian NM Front Desk web application

Running this code on your own machine

Dependencies

apt-get install python-markdown python-ldap python-psycopg2 python-xapian \
 python-django python-django-south python-django-housekeeping \
 python-debian python-debiancontributors

django-housekeeping

The ‘python-django-housekeeping’ package is not available in Debian earlier than Debian Stretch. If you are deploying to a machine running Debian earlier than Stretch, use the following procedure:

# https://github.com/spanezz/django-housekeeping
git clone https://github.com/spanezz/django-housekeeping
  (you can either build the package from it or symlink the module directory
  into the contributors.debian.org sources)

# build the package
fakeroot debian/rules clean binary

# install the package
dpkg -i  ../python-django-housekeeping_0.1-1_all.deb

Configuration

mkdir data # required by default settings
cd nm2
ln -s local_settings.py.devel local_settings.py
edit local_settings.py as needed

First setup

./manage.py migrate

Fill in data

Visit https://nm.debian.org/am/db-export to download nm-mock.json; for privacy, sensitive information are replaced with mock strings.

If you cannot login to the site, you can ask any DD to download it for you. There is nothing secret in the file, but I am afraid of giving out convenient email databases to anyone.

./manage.py import nm-mock.json

If you are a Front Desk member or a DAM, you can use https://nm.debian.org/am/db-export?full for a full database export.

Sync keyrings

rsync -az --progress keyring.debian.org::keyrings/keyrings/  ./data/keyrings/

Run database maintenance

./manage.py housekeeping

Run the web server

./manage.py runserver

Periodic updates

You need to run periodic maintenance to check/regenerate the denormalised fields:

./manage.py housekeeping

Development

Development targets Django 1.8, although the codebase has been created with Django 1.2 and it still shows in some places. Feel free to cleanup.

Unusual things in the design:

• backend/ has the core models. Note that backend.models.Process is the old-style workflow, and process.model.Process is the new style workflow.
• there is a custom permission system with a class hierarchy that starts at backend.models.VisitorPermissions, and that generates a set of permission strings that get tested in views and templates with things like if "edit_bio" in visit_perms: ….
• backend.mixins.VisitorMixin is the root of a class hierarchy of mixins used by most views in the site; those mixins implement the basis of resource instantiation and permission checking.