While preparing a development environment, make sure that you have the following in place:
- A fresh Python virtual environment: Python 3 includes the
venv
module or you can installvirtualenv
. Both of them prevent polluting your global Python library. pipenv is the recommended tool (used in this book as well) for higher-level management of virtual environments and dependencies. - Version control: Always use a version control tool such as Git or Mercurial. They are lifesavers. You can also make changes much more confidently and fearlessly.
- Choose a project template: Django's default project template is not the only option. Based on your needs, try other templates such as Edge (https://github.com/arocks/edge) by yours truly or use Cookiecutter (https://github.com/pydanny/cookiecutter-django).
- Deployment pipeline: I usually worry about this a bit later, but having a fast deployment process speeds up development. I prefer Fabric (it has a Python 3 fork called...