Running the demo

You can run the demo “in-tree” (without installing Plom) by first making sure your current working directory is the root of the source code (where pyproject.toml is located). Then run:

python3 plom_server/scripts/launch_plom_demo_server.py

or perhaps you’ll need:

PYTHONPATH=. python3 plom_server/scripts/launch_plom_demo_server.py

This runs the entire demo through to reassembling papers. You should probably run it with a --wait-after option, pass --help to see the various options.

To stop the demo type “quit” and press enter.

Problems

If the demo crashes (or you force quit out of it) then you may have lingering huey tasks floating about that you’ll need to terminate before running again. On Unix systems, one way to do this is:

pkill -KILL -f manage.py
pkill -KILL -f django-admin

This will terminate any user process that includes “manage.py”, which is (basically) all running Django related stuff…. not just those associated with the demo. Use with care.

Databases

The new Plom server needs a database, which must be setup before launching the server or the demo.

Commands below have been tested with Podman on a Fedora 40 laptop.

SQLite

Currently not functional. TODO: document how to try it.

PostgreSQL

Start a local container:

docker pull postgres
docker run --name postgres_cntnr -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=postgres -p 5432:5432 -d postgres

By default, things seem to want to use a socket instead of TCP/IP to talk to the database. For testing, I can connect with psql -h 127.0.0.1 -U postgres To make Django use TCP/IP, I put the “127.0.0.1” as the host in settings.py.

To stop the container:

docker stop postgre_cntnr
docker rm postgre_cntnr

MariaDB / MySQL

TODO: connect this to Plom.

Start a local container:

docker pull mariadb
docker run --name mariadb_cntnr -e MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=mypass -p 3306:3306 -d mariadb

Check that we can connect to the server:

mysql -h localhost -P 3306 --protocol=TCP -u root -p