Frequently Asked Questions¶
Are there Launchpad packages available?¶
No, Launchpad is not packaged and there are no plans to do so. Launchpad deployment is done straight from Git branches and is quite complex.
Why PostgreSQL?¶
PostgreSQL was chosen in 2004 because it supported most of the features we thought we would need; MySQL did not. The other contender was Oracle, and for a while we made sure we would be able to switch to Oracle if necessary but PostgreSQL has worked great.
How integrated is the database in the code?¶
Highly. We make use of PostgreSQL specific features, such as:
SQL language extensions
PL/pgSQL and Python stored procedures
Triggers
Functional indexes
Automatic load balancing over the replicas with Slony-I
Transactional DDL
tsearch2 full text search
Database permissions
What version of Python is required?¶
Currently, Python 3.5.
Can I look at the code without downloading it all?¶
Yes, you can browse the source code on Launchpad. You can also use
git clone https://git.launchpad.net/launchpad
to download the code
without setting up a development environment.
I have Launchpad running but mails are not sent…¶
Development Launchpads don’t send email to the outside world, for obvious reasons. They connect to the local SMTP server and send to root. To create new users, create a new account and check the local mailbox, or see Creating additional user accounts in the development environment.
My database permissions keep getting deleted!¶
If your local account is called “launchpad” it conflicts with a role called
“launchpad” which is defined in database/schema/security.cfg
. You need
to rename your local account and re-assign it superuser permissions as the
utilities/launchpad-database-setup
script does.