Installing Plone on a Windows 10 Linux Subsystem for Development¶
This document is a manual for installing a Plone CLI (and Python 3) based development environment into a Windows Linux Subsystem (WSL) under Windows 10. Ubuntu is used as the Linux distribution. It is possible to edit the add-ons created by Plone CLI with an IDE of your choice under Windows.
Introduction¶
The following tutorial will lead you through all the steps to install and use Plone CLI on your Windows device.
Ubuntu¶
Pre Settings¶
Before installing the shell for configuration, first enable the optional feature for a subsystem on Windows. Therefore the program Windows PowerShell has to be launched (as administrator! - right-click the application and choose launch as admin). Do not launch the Powershell ISE application, because it won’t work. In the shell the following command has to be entered.
Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux
If necessary, the device has to be restarted afterwards.
Download And Installing Ubuntu¶
After giving free the feature for a subsystem, the distribution package of Ubuntu can be downloaded using the following command.
Invoke-WebRequest -Uri https://aka.ms/wsl-ubuntu-1804 -OutFile Ubuntu.appx -UseBasicParsing
To install the downloaded package, execute the following command.
Add-AppxPackage .\Ubuntu.appx
Setting Up Ubuntu¶
After installing the application, it can be found in the startmenu or in the apps, or by searching it. After starting Ubuntu, it take some time to process futher installation steps and establish the needed components. An username and password is required, independend of the Windows user data.
Because most distributions just deliver an outdated catalog within the download, it is recommended to instantly update the packet. (You should execute the steps regulary to keep the system up to date).
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade
Windows does not update any components of a Linux subsystem, all have to be carried out manually!
Latest Python On Ubuntu¶
Our Linux operating system is installed to author software, so here an explaination how to install Python. To install one or more Python versions on the subsystem, a certain management application for it called Pyenv has to be installed.
Install Pyenv¶
To install Pyenv, use the command below in the Ubuntu shell. After completing the download, the shell has to be restarted to take over all changes.
curl https://pyenv.run | bash
Configure Paths¶
To set the right paths for certain activities and to enable Pyenv local environment, edit the file ~/.bashrc.
nano .bashrc
After opening the document, at the bottom of the code 3 lines have to be appended:
export PATH="$HOME/.pyenv/bin:$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"
eval "$(pyenv init -)"
eval "$(pyenv virtualenv-init -)"
The path is important insofar, because further commands can executed if the paths, where they have to be tapped, are known. To apply the changes, save the document and apply them.
source .bashrc
Install Python¶
After finishing the setup, it is possible to install the needed version of Python in Ubuntu. Before installing Python, the system needs to be prepared with a C-compiler and some libraries. To install them, a sudo (superuser do) command (with password, configured when setting up Ubuntu shell) is needed.
sudo apt install -y make build-essential libssl-dev zlib1g-dev libbz2-dev \
libreadline-dev libsqlite3-dev wget curl llvm libncurses5-dev libncursesw5-dev \
xz-utils tk-dev libffi-dev liblzma-dev python-openssl git python3-dev libxml2-dev libxslt1-dev libjpeg62-dev
In this case, Python version 3.7.4 is installed. To use the language version globally, it has to be enabled first.
pyenv install 3.7.4
pyenv global 3.7.4
Plone CLI¶
We use Plone CLI here to work with Plone. Plone CLI is a command line interface for creating Plone packages, as also for building and starting Plone. Plone CLI need to be installed on the subsystem by typing the following command.
It is installed as a global user-package, so that it can be used for several projects. Plone CLI’s newest release will be pulled immediately. While at it we install also the latest Pip first. Pip is a Python package installer. It pulls released Python packages from the Python Package Index and installs them in the current Python environment.
pip install --upgrade pip
pip install plonecli --user
Bash Auto Completion¶
To activate the autocomplete function for Plone CLI, again the .bashrc document has to be opened and a path is inserted at the bottom of the so far code.
Open editor.
nano .bashrc
Code to insert.
. ~/.local/bin/plonecli_autocomplete.sh
Afterwards, the script has to be applied again.
source .bashrc
Creating A Plone Add-on¶
Before creating an add-on, the correct path has to be chosen.
To edit the code via Windows and execute it under Ubuntu with Plone CLI, a shared place accessible from both systems is needed.
Under Ubuntu this location is /mnt/c/ for the Windows C-drive.
Create a folder in Windows C:\Plone-Projects.
In Linux it is located under /mnt/c/Plone-Projects.
In the Ubuntu shell use the cd command following with the path chosen to create the addon in.
Plone CLI asks some questions to be answered before creating the custom add-on.
cd /mnt/c/Plone-Projects
plonecli create addon collective.example
Edit and build add-on¶
To add features to the add-on, its directory has to be entered.
cd /mnt/c/Plone-Projects/collective.example
Then, several featueres may be added. For example:
plonecli add behavior
plonecli add content_type
plonecli add theme
plonecli add view
plonecli add viewlet
plonecli add vocabulary
For more information consult the Plone CLI documentation.
Install and build Plone.
plonecli build
To start Plone so that it can be accessed from the web browser run:
plonecli serve
Now in Windows in your browser visit http://localhost:8080/ and go on creating a Site using Plone.
To apply future changes to your configuration (buildout), run
plonecli buildout