"Install Wagtail in just 7 lines" doesn't works

I try to install wagtail following the instruction on the front page:

pip install wagtail
wagtail start mysite
cd mysite
pip install -r requirements.txt
python manage.py migrate
python manage.py createsuperuser
python manage.py runserver

Sadly it fail already on pip install wagtail:

Could not install packages due to an EnvironmentError: [Errno 13] Permission denied: '/usr/lib/python3.6/dist-packages/modelcluster'
Consider using the `--user` option or check the permissions.

I’m using a clean EC2 instance on AWS started from https://aws.amazon.com/cloud9/ with Python 3.6.7. I guess I should use a virtual environment.

The point is: if it can break so easily why showing those instruction? I just wanted to test wagtail and launched an VM in the cloud to try it, this give me a bad first impression.

[gasman]

I like the idea of using pip install --user - it’s a good middle ground that avoids the two extremes of giving people advice that contradicts real-world best practices, versus “here’s how to install Wagtail in 7 commands once you’ve read a whole load of documentation about Python virtualenvs” 😃 And for people who are already familiar with virtualenvs, it should hopefully be self-explanatory enough that they should be able to confidently adapt the instructions accordingly. Thanks @BenSturmfels!

Any objections to this approach? I’ll go ahead and update the page if not.

[tomdyson]

Thanks very much for the feedback @gagarine. We discussed some options in the last core team meeting and agreed on this:

the link goes to https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/venv.html. Do you think this gives the right level of help to beginners?