Deep insights from our research and experience

Thumbnail image for Dissecting a Python Zipapp Built with Shiv

Dissecting a Python Zipapp Built with Shiv

In a previous post, we showed how to use shiv to bundle a Django project into a single file for distribution and deployment. Running a large Python project as a single file feels like magic – which is great until …
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Single-file Python/Django Deployments

This post covers portions of my talk, Containerless Django, from DjangoCon US 2018. Deploying Python has improved significantly since I started working with it over a decade ago. We have virtualenv, pip, wheels, package hash verification, and lock files. Despite …
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Cracking Django Password Hashes

Most of the Django projects I work with take advantage of django.contrib.auth. It manages users and groups and is tightly coupled with django.contrib.admin. In this post, we are going to explore how it resists a potential attacker. The study below …
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Saying Goodbye to BotBot.me

Our venerable IRC logger, BotBot.me logged its first lines in the summer of 2012 . Since then, it has logged over 100 million lines for more than 400 IRC channels, primarily on the Freenode and Mozilla networks. Despite the rise …
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Sandboxing Services with Systemd

With Ubuntu 14.04 (Trusty) now a year away from end-of-life, we’ve been planning and performing upgrades for the soon-to-be legacy OS. The biggest change is the move from Upstart to Systemd for managing services. It’s trivial to convert a service …
Thumbnail image for Logging to Systemd's Journal in Python

Logging to Systemd's Journal in Python

I’ll be the first to admit that I was skeptical about Systemd and its companion log aggregator Journald, but after working with if for a few months, I’ve seen the light (or drunk the Kool Aid… not sure). Typically I …
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Goodbye manage.py

Every Django project starts with a manage.py file in its root. It’s a convenience script that allows you to run administrative tasks like Django’s included django-admin. In our last post, we discussed the merits of including a setup.py file in …
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Using setup.py in Your (Django) Project

A client recently asked me why all the Django projects we create have a setup.py in the root of the project. Lots of projects get by just fine without one, so why do I use it? The explanation turned out …
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Django Logging, The Right Way

Good logging is critical to debugging and troubleshooting problems. Not only is it helpful in local development, but in production it’s indispensable. When reviewing logs for an issue, it’s rare to hear somebody say, “We have too much logging in …
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Disabling Error Emails in Django

One of Django’s nice “batteries included” features is the ability to send emails when an error is encountered. This is a great feature for small sites where minor problems would otherwise go unnoticed. Once your site start getting lots of …