First, let us have a look at some background on Buildout.
You do not have to use easy_install or PIP to install Buildout as we are about to do. Doing so will cause Buildout to be installed on your system Python's site-packages directory; the choice is yours.
The Zope community provides a bootstrap file for creating isolated Buildout environments outside site-packages: http://svn.zope.org/repos/main/zc.buildout/trunk/bootstrap/bootstrap.py.
If you download and execute this file, it will create a buildout in the current working directory.
We will use that method almost exclusively later, but for now, let us install Buildout globally (that is in the system Python's site-packages directory).
Also, let us try using PIP instead of easy_install this time (since we have just installed PIP).
To install Buildout using PIP, open Finder | Applications | Utilities | Terminal and type:
$ sudo pip install zc.buildout
Tip
Namespace packages
Note that the package name of Buildout is zc.buildout, which indicates it is a "namespace package". To read more about this topic, visit: http://docs.python.org/tutorial/modules.html#packages.
You should see:
If you are prompted for a password, type your Mac OS X account password.
To verify that Buildout works, type:
$ buildout
Assuming you are not in a directory with a buildout.cfg file, you should see:
We have just finished demonstrating how to install and test Buildout on Mac OS X.
To install Buildout, select Start | All Programs | Accessories | Command Prompt and type:
$ pip install zc.buildout
You should see:
To verify that Buildout works, type:
We have just finished demonstrating how to install and test Buildout on Windows.
