How do I add a SVN dependency?

You have hear about this wonderfull package, maybe lovely.tag, and want to try it out. You follow the instructions at How do I add an egg dependency? but that package is not in the index, so you can't install it via easy_install or buildout. Google's "I'm feeling lucky" takes you to http://svn.zope.org/lovely.tag/. So it is in a svn repository, sort of. What do you do?:

    # always activate the virtual environment
    $ cd ~/myenv
    $ source bin/activate

    # and now the svn checkout
    $ svn co svn://svn.zope.org/repos/main/lovely.tag/trunk lovely.tag

Note the changes between the http url and the svn. You have to put repos/main inmediately after the host name, and you have to download only the trunk folder.

Once the folder has been downloaded, you have to buildout the package. Since you're working in your virtual environment with all the commands at hand, it is easy:

    $ cd lovely.tag
    $ ../bin/buildout

If you were working outside the virtual environment, you'll have to install easy_install and buildout. For this reason most packages contain a bootstrap.py script that makes that work for you.

After the buildout you have a development package, so you can follow the usual method to register it.