.. _installation: Installation ============ South's current release is :ref:`1.0 <1-0-release-notes>`. There are a few different ways to install South: - :ref:`Using pip or easy_install `, which is recommended if you want stable releases. - :ref:`Using a Mercurial checkout `, recommended if you want cutting-edge features. Some Linux distributions are also starting to include South in their package repositories; if you're running unstable Debian you can ``apt-get install python-django-south``, and on new Fedoras you can use ``yum install Django-south``. Note that this may give you an older version - check the version before using the packages. South <=0.7.3 should work with versions of Django from 0.97-pre through to 1.1. South >=0.7.4 should work with versions of Django from 1.2 and higher. Please check the compatibility notes section in the release notes of the specific release you are using for further detail. .. _installation-easy-install: Using pip or easy_install ------------------------- If you have pip or easy_install available on your system, just type:: pip install South # or easy_install South If you've already got an old version of South, and want to upgrade, use:: pip install -U South # or easy_install -U South That's all that's needed to install the package; you'll now want to :ref:`configure your Django installation `. .. _installation-mercurial: Using Mercurial --------------- You can install directly from our Mercurial repo, allowing you to recieve updates and bugfixes as soon as they're made. You'll need Mercurial installed on your system; if it's not already, you'll want to get it. The package name is ``mercurial`` on most Linux distributions; OSX and Windows users can download packages from http://mercurial.berkwood.com. Make sure you're in a directory where you want the ``south`` directory to appear, and run:: hg clone http://bitbucket.org/andrewgodwin/south/ To update an existing Mercurial checkout to the newest version, run:: hg pull hg up -C tip (Rather than running from tip, you can also use the ``stableish`` tag, which is manually set on reasonably stable trunk commits, or pick a version number tag.) Once you have this directory, move onto :ref:`installation-from-directory`. .. _installation-from-directory: Installing from a directory --------------------------- If you've obtained a copy of South using either Mercurial or a downloadable archive, you'll need to install the copy you have system-wide. Try running:: python setup.py develop If that fails, you don't have ``setuptools`` or an equivalent installed; either install them, or run:: python setup.py install Note that ``develop`` sets the installed version to run from the directory you just created, while ``install`` copies all the files to Python's ``site-packages`` folder, meaning that if you update your checkout you'll need to re-run ``install``. You could also install South locally for only one project, by either including with your project and modifying ``sys.path`` in your settings file, or (preferably) by using virtualenv, pip and a requirements.txt. A tutorial in how to use these is outside the scope of this documentation, but `there are tutorials elsewhere `_. Once you've done one of those, you'll want to :ref:`configure your Django installation `. .. _installation-configure: Configuring your Django installation ------------------------------------ Now you've installed South system-wide, you'll need to configure Django to use it. Doing so is simple; just edit your ``settings.py`` and add ``'south'`` to the end of ``INSTALLED_APPS``. If Django doesn't seem to pick this up, check that you're not overriding ``INSTALLED_APPS`` elsewhere, and that you can run ``import south`` from inside ``./manage.py shell`` with no errors. Once South is added in, you'll need to run ``./manage.py syncdb`` to make the South migration-tracking tables (South doesn't use migrations for its own models, for various reasons). Now South is loaded into your project and ready to go, you'll probably want to take a look at our :ref:`tutorial`.