philwilson.org

This is a summary of what I got from the Trac installation instructions here, here, here and here. My life would have been easier if I was running Apache2, but for the site in question, I’m not.

The version numbers I am working with:

• apache - 1.3.34-4.1
• python - 2.4.4-2
• libapache-mod-python 2:2.7.11-2
• Trac 0.11b2

Install easy_install, followed by the Trac requirements:

$ easy_install Pygments
$ easy_install Genshi
$ easy_install Trac
$ easy_install sqlite
$ apt-get install libapache-mod-python
$ apt-get install python-pysqlite2
$ cd ~
$ mkdir trac/myprojectname
$ trac-admin trac/myprojectname initenv

(enter the details you need or just keep hitting to accept the defaults - it’s all configurable later)

Type the tracd line given to you at the end of the install and make sure it runs (probably need your IP at this point because it won’t bind to a hostname).

Add this inside your VirtualHost:

<Location /wherever/you/like>
  SetHandler python-program
  PythonHandler trac.web.modpython_frontend
  PythonOption TracEnv /absolute/path/trac/myprojectname
  PythonOption TracUriRoot /wherever/you/like
  PythonDebug On
</Location>

Patch /usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/Trac-0.11b2-py2.4.egg/trac/web/modpython_frontend.py with code from http://trac.edgewall.org/wiki/TracModPython2.7 (yes, it’s all needed) - the “Known Issues” at the end of the code apply, most notably “There may be a character set issue” - for me this manifested itself in the <title> element of the page with a “–” separating my project name from the word “Trac” rather than a long hypen.

It turns out that I hate having the mouse cursor visible in my working window. I didn’t really know about this until I used a colleague’s dual-monitor machine. He has set the window focus to follow the pointer and I consistently selected the window I wanted to type in and one whoosh of the mouse later was happily typing code into Firefox.

It turns out that this doesn’t really work
After I went back to my machine I tried to pay attention to what I was doing with the mouse after I’ve selected a window, and I do indeed almost always give it a quick flick left or right and take the pointer to the edge of the screen where it’s out of my way.

So it means I’m glad to find out about unclutter (via Erik), a small Linux application for hiding the mouse pointer after a customised period of delay. Much nicer!