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Setup

App Engine has an excellent site with online documentation and tutorials.  Before coming to the boot camp, you will need to go online to download and install the software you will need on your laptop to do App Engine development.  Unfortunately, several of these downloads are large and installation programs can take quite some time.

Allow several hours to complete these Setup Instructions
Be Sure to do this BEFORE coming to the Boot Camp.

Note: I've tested and written these instructions for Windows.  I believe they work and apply equally for Macinstosh installations - let me know if you run into significant differences, and I'll document them here.
  1. Sign up for an App Engine Account - https://appengine.google.com/

    I recommend you use a gmail account rather than another Google Apps for domains account - I've had some     problems when using the latter.

  2. Install Python if you don't have it on your machine already.

    I recommend getting 2.6.4.  Google documents that 2.5.2 is the version of python used on the hosted platform, but I've found that some of the tools they provide DON'T WORK with 2.5.2 on the local machine (due to older SSL library)!  The differences between 2.5 and 2.6 are minor - with some libraries having some differences.  But in practice, I don't think you'll run into incompatibilities.

    1. Add ";c:\Python26;c:\Python26\Scripts" to your PATH variable
    2. Add ";.PY;.PYW" to your PATHEXT environment variable

    3. Confirm Python Installed

      C:\src>python
      Python 2.6.4 (r264:75708, Oct 26 2009, 08:23:19) [MSC v.1500 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
      Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
      >>>

    4. Install SetupTools and
      easy_install

      (you can skip this step if you want to download Django directly from the link below)

  3. Install Django 1.1:

    > easy_install django

    or, alternatively:

    1. Download Django 1.1 tarball
    2. Unpack to \src\django-1.1
    3. c:\src\django-1.1> setup install

  4. Install the App Engine SDK for Python

  5. Install PIL - Simple Imaging Library (optional)

    Only needed if you plan on doing on-server image manipulation (e.g., thumbnailing)

  6. Install the Eclipse IDE
    1. Install Java Runtime
    2. Download "Eclipse IDE for Java Developers"
    3. Unzip to c:\Program Files\eclipse
    4. Create desktop shortcut to c:\Program Files\eclipse\eclipse.exe

  7. Configure Eclipse
    1. Run Eclipse
    2. Install PyDev
      1. Help/Install New Software
      2. Enter http://pydev.org/
        updates into the sites field
      3. Check the PyDev box
      4. Click Next Twice
      5. Accept license and Finish (restart Eclipse if prompted)
      6. Configure PyDev
        1. Window/Preferences/PyDev/Interpreter-Python/New...
        2. Select New...
        3. Enter "Python26" and "c:\Python26\python.exe"
        4. OK
      7. Find more detailed instructions here (but for an older Eclipse version)
    3. Install Web Tools (optional, but nice to have)
      1. Help/Install New Software
      2. http://download.eclipse.org/webtools/updates/
      3. Recommend Web Developer Tools, XML Editors, JavaScript Developer Tools, Web Page Editor

  8. Install Mercurial Source Control Client - http://mercurial.selenic.com/

  9. Checkout/Clone the source code for the tutorials to your c:\src\aebootcamp:

    Repository Creation

    cd \
    mkdir src
    cd src
    hg clone https://aebootcamp.googlecode.com/hg/ aebootcamp
Once these steps are complete - you should be able to run a local (development server) version of App Engine.  To test your installation, go to Hello WebApp.
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