The Occasional Occurence

I have been thinking lately about how it is still pretty involved to deploy a CherryPy (or any Python web) application to a "production" server (Apache, lighttpd, IIS, etc).

The easiest method that I know at this point is mod_proxy with Apache:

Virtualhost *
    ServerName cpsite.server.domain
    CustomLog "/var/log/apache/cpsite/access_log" combined
    ErrorLog /var/log/apache/cpsite/error_log
    ProxyPass / http://localhost:8081/
    ProxyPassReverse / http://localhost:8081/
/Virtualhost

As long as the "cpsite" app is running on port 8081, everything should be cool.

If you are running Apache 2, you can even do this (grabbed from the CP wiki):

Location /myapp
ProxyPass http://localhost:8080
ProxyPassReverse http://localhost:8080
RequestHeader set CP-Location /myapp
/Location

If you want to do WSGI, it starts getting quite a bit more complicated. You need FCGI or SCGI or mod_python support for Apache and a handful of other Python libraries/modules to glue your (CP) WSGI app to the production server.

Are there any other easier ways that I am missing?

One thing that I like about the way PHP works is how easy it is to deploy apps. It usually works like this.

1. Stick app's folder somewhere in your document root
2. Modify the app's config.php file
3. (maybe) Browse to http://theserver/theapp/install.php and follow the steps

That's pretty simple. *sigh*

Dreaming of mod_wsgi,

cw