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diff --git a/docs/source/siteadmin/codebase.rst b/docs/source/siteadmin/codebase.rst new file mode 100644 index 00000000..3ef91290 --- /dev/null +++ b/docs/source/siteadmin/codebase.rst @@ -0,0 +1,160 @@ +.. MediaGoblin Documentation + + Written in 2011, 2012 by MediaGoblin contributors + + To the extent possible under law, the author(s) have dedicated all + copyright and related and neighboring rights to this software to + the public domain worldwide. This software is distributed without + any warranty. + + You should have received a copy of the CC0 Public Domain + Dedication along with this software. If not, see + <http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/>. + +.. _codebase-chapter: + +======================== + Codebase Documentation +======================== + +.. contents:: Sections + :local: + + +This chapter covers the libraries that GNU MediaGoblin uses as well as +various recipes for getting things done. + +.. Note:: + + This chapter is in flux. Clearly there are things here that aren't + documented. If there's something you have questions about, please + ask! + + See `the join page on the website <http://mediagoblin.org/join/>`_ + for where we hang out. + +For more information on how to get started hacking on GNU MediaGoblin, +see `the wiki <http://wiki.mediagoblin.org/>`_. + + +Software Stack +============== + +* Project infrastructure + + * `Python <http://python.org/>`_: the language we're using to write + this + + * `Nose <http://somethingaboutorange.com/mrl/projects/nose/>`_: + for unit tests + + * `virtualenv <http://www.virtualenv.org/>`_: for setting up an + isolated environment to keep mediagoblin and related packages + (potentially not required if MediaGoblin is packaged for your + distro) + +* Data storage + + * `SQLAlchemy <http://sqlalchemy.org/>`_: SQL ORM and database + interaction library for Python. Currently we support sqlite and + postgress as backends. + +* Web application + + * `Paste Deploy <http://pythonpaste.org/deploy/>`_ and + `Paste Script <http://pythonpaste.org/script/>`_: we'll use this for + configuring and launching the application + + * `WebOb <http://pythonpaste.org/webob/>`_: nice abstraction layer + from HTTP requests, responses and WSGI bits + + * `Routes <http://routes.groovie.org/>`_: for URL routing + + * `Beaker <http://beaker.groovie.org/>`_: for handling sessions and + caching + + * `Jinja2 <http://jinja.pocoo.org/docs/>`_: the templating engine + + * `WTForms <http://wtforms.simplecodes.com/>`_: for handling, + validation, and abstraction from HTML forms + + * `Celery <http://celeryproject.org/>`_: for task queuing (resizing + images, encoding video, ...) + + * `Babel <http://babel.edgewall.org>`_: Used to extract and compile + translations. + + * `Markdown (for python) <http://pypi.python.org/pypi/Markdown>`_: + implementation of `Markdown <http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/>`_ + text-to-html tool to make it easy for people to write richtext + comments, descriptions, and etc. + + * `lxml <http://lxml.de/>`_: nice xml and html processing for + python. + +* Media processing libraries + + * `Python Imaging Library <http://www.pythonware.com/products/pil/>`_: + used to resize and otherwise convert images for display. + + * `GStreamer <http://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/>`_: (Optional, for + video hosting sites only) Used to transcode video, and in the + future, probably audio too. + + * `chardet <http://pypi.python.org/pypi/chardet>`_: (Optional, for + ascii art hosting sites only) Used to make ascii art thumbnails. + +* Front end + + * `JQuery <http://jquery.com/>`_: for groovy JavaScript things + + + +What's where +============ + +After you've run checked out mediagoblin and followed the virtualenv +instantiation instructions, you're faced with the following directory +tree:: + + mediagoblin/ + |- mediagoblin/ # source code + | |- tests/ + | |- templates/ + | |- auth/ + | \- submit/ + |- docs/ # documentation + |- devtools/ # some scripts for developer convenience + | + | # the below directories are installed into your virtualenv checkout + | + |- bin/ # scripts + |- develop-eggs/ + |- lib/ # python libraries installed into your virtualenv + |- include/ + |- mediagoblin.egg-info/ + |- parts/ + |- user_dev/ # sessions, etc + + +As you can see, all the code for GNU MediaGoblin is in the +``mediagoblin`` directory. + +Here are some interesting files and what they do: + +:routing.py: maps url paths to views +:views.py: views handle http requests +:models.py: holds the sqlalchemy schemas---these are the data structures + we're working with + +You'll notice that there are several sub-directories: tests, +templates, auth, submit, ... + +``tests`` holds the unit test code. + +``templates`` holds all the templates for the output. + +``auth`` and ``submit`` are modules that enacpsulate authentication +and media item submission. If you look in these directories, you'll +see they have their own ``routing.py``, ``view.py``, and +``models.py`` in addition to some other code. |