Well, yes and no. It may take some twiddling to get the prerequisite dependencies set up correctly, if they're not already installed and in use on your target machine. And the build in step 3 is lengthy; there are a number of things that can go wrong during that process, which may require some troubleshooting. Macs in particular can be a bit finicky. Generally, however, it's not too hard to get things going, and after you've got it working the first time, subsequent builds (whether to create a new site or to upgrade an existing) work with very little trouble.

Great! How do I get started?

Glad you asked! Just keep reading... the rest of this page details the exact steps you'll want to take, outlining some pitfalls along the way. Good luck, and we hope you enjoy playing with OpenPlans!

Reduction (wherein we list the installation steps w/o all of the extraneous mess)

With that all said, here's the bare-minimum set of installation instructions.

$ easy_install-2.4 https://svn.openplans.org/svn/OpenplansBoot/trunk
$ new_openplans_site site.domain.com  base_port  # (<-- enter config svn repo URL)
$ cd site.domain.com
$ ./newbuild.sh openplans/trunk  # (<-- enter admin pw, mysql root pw, possibly 'p' to accept ssl certificate)
$ cd builds/YYYYMMDD
$ ./bin/supervisord

Or, if you want a Plone 2.5-based installation:

$ easy_install-2.4 https://svn.openplans.org/svn/OpenplansBoot/trunk
$ new_openplans_site site.domain.com  base_port  # (<-- enter config svn repo URL)
$ cd site.domain.com
$ ./newbuild.sh openplans/branches/plone25  # (<-- enter admin pw, mysql root pw, maybe 'p' to accept ssl certificate)
$ cd builds/YYYYMMDD
$ ./bin/supervisord

Then point your browser at http://localhost:base_port/. Not so bad, eh?

Note that by default, the server on [base_port] is configured to only listen to requests from localhost; the assumption is that you will run a local proxy (e.g. Apache mod_proxy, with any number of caching layers in between) to expose the application.  If you want to connect directly, or if you are running a remote proxy, edit the {path_to_builds/YYYYMMDD}/etc/deliverance/deliverance.ini file and change the second instance of localhost to 0.0.0.0 to tell it to accept all connections.

For more detailed instructions, explanations and troubleshooting, read on...

Instruction (wherein we cover the installation process in no small detail)

If you want less detail, skip ahead to the ­abbreviated instructions .

Now that you've got the prerequisite pieces in place and functional, you're ready to get to the actual process of installing OpenPlans, via the following steps:

1. Install the OpenplansBoot package: This bootstraps the installation tools. Run this command:
   
   

   $ easy_install https://svn.openplans.org/svn/OpenplansBoot/trunk
   

   
   We recommend you use the ­virtualenv package to install OpenplansBoot into a virtual Python environment, rather than into the system Python environment. Regardless of whether you do this, OpenPlans will make heavy use of virtualenv for managing its own services.
   
   As noted above, Python 2.5 or later is not supported at this time. Many systems use 2.5 as the default Python these days, so you may need to explicitly use easy_install-2.4 to ensure that your build uses the right Python version.
2. Run the 'new_openplans_site' command: Installing OpenplansBoot should put a 'new_openplans_site' command on your executable path. It should be invoked as such:
   
   

   $ new_openplans_site site.domain.com base_port
   

   
   Where site.domain.com is the hostname at which you plan on making your OpenPlans site available (you can choose any descriptive name if you're just trying to test it out locally) and base_port is the numeric port at which the site will be made available. WARNING: OpenPlans actually consists of many interacting HTTP services, all exposed as one integrated site available at the base_port. Each of these services needs its own port, so you should choose a base_port that is followed by a space of available ports. At the time of this writing, OpenPlans uses 8 ports, from base_port through base_port+7, although you may want to leave even more available space to support additional services that OpenPlans may add in the future.
   
   When you run the new_openplans_site command, you'll be prompted for the URL of your configuration svn repository. Once this is provided, the command should return almost immediately, having created a directory with the name of your specified hostname. This directory will contain a sparse OpenPlans deployment skeleton directory structure, as well as the 'newbuild.sh' script that you will use in the next step.
3. Run the 'newbuild.sh' script: Okay, now we get to the actual meat of the process. The newbuild.sh script launches a lengthy build process, which will, after a bit of time, generate a fully working OpenPlans installation, ready to be launched and to start accepting requests. You can go get a snack, but you shouldn't wander too far because you will be prompted for a bit more information during the process. Here's how you invoke the command:
   
   

   $ cd site.domain.com
   $ ./newbuild.sh requirements_directory

   In the above command, requirements_directory is the name of a subversion directory containing files that specify all of the underlying dependencies of the OpenPlans software. OpenPlans has a number of different build configurations, this parameter allows us to easily choose between them. The simplest choice for getting started is the following:
   
   

   $ ./newbuild.sh openplans/trunk

   If you run newbuild.sh with no arguments, you will see a list of the available requirements directories.
   
   NOTE: If you want to try out the older Plone 2.5-based OpenPlans stack, you can use the following invocation.
   
   

   $ ./newbuild.sh openplans/branches/plone25

   After executing newbuild.sh, there will be a short delay as initial requirements are downloaded. Eventually you will be prompted for an admin password that will protect your OpenPlans installation. You can enter a password of your choosing (twice), or you can simply hit 'Enter' to autogenerate a random password. In either case, the password will be stored in an admin.txt file that you can refer to later.
   
   The next thing you will be prompted for is the MySQL root password. This is needed because OpenPlans will be creating a number of MySQL databases to support some of its services.
   
   There's one more issue that may arise: some of the software is downloaded from the Plone subversion repository, which is protected by an unsigned SSL certificate. If you have never connected to this repository, then you will be prompted about the certificate, and given a chance to accept or reject it. If this happens, we recommend you hit 'p' to 'p'ermanently accept the certificate . Warning: due to a bug, you might not see this prompt. If the build seems stuck, just hit 'p' and see if that gets things moving again :-)
   
   Or you can avoid this prompt altogether by running the following command before running newbuild.sh:
   
   

   $ svn ls https://svn.plone.org/svn/plone

   This will also prompt you to accept the certificate, if you haven't already done so; if you choose 'p' at this point, then it will not come up again while running the build.
   
   That's it! Assuming that all of the prerequisites are configured and available to the build process as needed, then your build will complete and you will have a fully functional OpenPlans installation. Your build will live within the 'builds' directory, in a subdirectory named after the current date. Let's fire it up!
4. Start the supervisor daemon: OpenPlans uses supervisor to manage the various services of which it is comprised. To start OpenPlans, then, you use the following commands:
   
   

   $ cd builds/YYYYMMDD
   $ ./bin/supervisord

   This starts the supervisor daemon. You can examine the processes that are being managed using:
   
   

   $ ./bin/supervisorctl status

   You would also use 'supervisorctl' to stop, start, and restart the services, either individually (by service name, e.g. 'supervisorctl restart opencore') or as a whole (using 'supervisorctl restart all'). If you want to shut down the entire rig, including the supervisor daemon itself, use:
   
   

   $ ./bin/supervisorctl shutdown

5. Use the OpenPlans site: Assuming you haven't stopped or shutdown the services, you should now be able to point a web browser at http://localhost:base_port and immediately start using the OpenPlans site. C'est finis. :-)