The Django development team has recently released the first beta of the upcoming major version of the framework, Django 1.5. At BitNami, one of our goals is to simplify the testing of the latest versions of open source web applications and language runtimes. We are happy to announce that we have just also released our first BitNami DjangoStack with 1.5. It is completely self-contained and it will not conflict with your current development environment. You can download it, give a try and safely remove it when you are done.
Django is a high-level Python Web framework that encourages rapid development and clean, pragmatic design. If you are not familiar already with BitNami DjangoStack, it is a free packaging offering that simplifies the development and deployment of Django and Python applications.This version includes ready-to-run versions of Apache 2.2 with mod_wsgi 3.3, SQLite 3.7, MySQL 5.5, PostgreSQL 9.2 with PostGIS 2.0 (only of Linux and Mac OS X), Python 2.7 and Django 1.5. It can be deployed using all-in-one free native installers (for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows), virtual machines and Amazon Cloud Images.
The biggest new feature in Django 1.5 is the configurable User model. You can check the release notes for this version here.
Another important new feature is that GeoDjango now supports PostGIS 2.0, which is already bundled in the BitNami DjangoStack. GeoDjango makes it simple to create geographic Web applications, like location-based services. You can now check our GeoDjango Quickstart guide for details on how to use GeoDjango with PostGIS 2.0 on BitNami DjangoStack.
As a reminder, our bi-weekly contest is now open to Python web applications. If there is any application that you would like to see added to the BitNami Library visit our contest page. You can vote for the applications in our contest or also summit new applications.