In this chapter we have provided a quick overview of various deployment and maintenance tools. There are literally dozens of additional tools available in the Django and web development community. Many of these have reached an exceedingly high level of quality and are used in many top Django and Python development shops. This includes:
Mod_wsgito simplify Django deployments and reduce memory overhead- Fabric to automatically perform remote deployment activities over Secure Shell (SSH)
- Buildout and Virtualenv to create isolated project environments
- Creating reusable, distributable packages using
distutils
Investing in a deployment process is essential for projects of a certain size. Not only will automation help make the tasks easier, but it makes it repeatable by people potentially unfamiliar with a deployment situation. Having good tools and good documentation are the best way to help someone who may be trying to solve a deployment issue in the middle of the night.
Also remember that there is often no right approach to the problems any of these tools are trying to solve. In some cases there may be objectively better approaches—they may require fewer steps or fewer configurations to achieve the same thing. But even a slightly flawed process is going to be a marked improvement over nothing at all.