Create guide to help teachers preconfigure a classroom

[ncoghlan]

In a school setting, teachers may need to set up multiple systems with the same set of packages, potentially without good access to PyPI from individual machines. (https://twitter.com/chris_swan/status/1037440530995703808?s=19 for example).

There are some decent options for handling this, including:

• use a larger Python distribution such as Anaconda or Python(x, y) that pre installs a range of PyPI packages
• use https://github.com/cloudify-cosmo/wagon to create a wheel bundle for installation on each system
• setting up a local caching proxy that only permits installation of an approved set of packages (this one will typically require cooperation from the school IT staff, but some teachers will be fortunate enough to have that)

[ncoghlan]

We could potentially even go so far as to https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/2.6/modules/pip_module.html and other config management tools, as this is literally the kind of ad hoc systems administration problem that Ansible was built to solve, and it can use Windows native remote control capabilities to set up the individual machines: https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/2.4/intro_windows.html

[ncoghlan]

Syncing up with the folks behind http://pythonineducation.org/en/ would also likely be a good idea (cc @ntoll)

[ntoll]

How can I help..? (And happy to do so)

[ncoghlan]

I was mostly thinking in terms of cross-referencing between the two sites once there's actually a relevant guide to reference on the PyPUG side, but it occurs to me that it would make sense to ask yourself and Carrie-Anne for content and structure suggestions as well, since it's tricky to figure out which audience this should be pitched at.

1. One of the key benefits of the Raspberry Pi is that Raspbian SD cards come preconfigured, so you don't need to load software onto the Pi interactively over the network, you just plug in a suitable SD card.

2. All of the no-system-admin-required solutions for software installation assume you're installing them for yourself, and that doesn't work if you're a teacher wanting to install things on school computers for your students to use.

3. wagon and other bundle delivery solutions tend to suffer from bootstrapping problems on the receiving side (especially on Windows), and also suffer from requiring admin access in order to install components that other accounts on the same machine can use

4. Running a local caching proxy means having a network server that all the student machines can see, and then preconfiguring pip on those machines to use that proxy.

So I'm thinking that the situation it would make sense for a guide to target is teachers that have the cooperation of their local IT staff, so machine-wide installation and preconfiguration of components is possible, but they need to know what they should be asking their IT staff to set up.

For folks that don't have that cooperation, I think our best answer is going to be "This is one of the main reasons why the Raspberry Pi exists - so you can just plug a physical SD card into a device rather than having to install the software yourself".