[ZODB-Dev] Repozo tests -- not

[Jim Fulton]

On Wed, Dec 2, 2009 at 10:09 AM, Jeff Shell <jeff at bottlerocket.net> wrote:
> On Dec 2, 2009, at 5:39 AM, Jim Fulton wrote:
>
>> On Wed, Dec 2, 2009 at 7:19 AM, Martin Aspeli <optilude+lists at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Jim Fulton wrote:

...

>> BTW, offline back ups if file-storage even with Blobs is
>> straightforward without repozo.
>
> No, it's not. What do we use to check for integrity of the other backups?

That is separate from backup and restore.

FWIW, I'm pretty happy with the verification script,
multi-zodb-check-refs, in the
zc.zodbdgc package. It checks whether all objects reachable from database roots
are loadable. It supports multi-database configurations and blobs.  Of course,
most people wouldn't be aware of this. It also has an option to
provide a reverse
reference database, which is useful for tracking down where problem
objects are used.

> fsrefs? fstest? fsoids? Many of the ZODB Scripts are barely useful and certainly not 'straightforward'.

I couldn't agree more.

...

> And I think it's funny that you give so much concern to Blobs when I have abandoned them in sheer
> frustration. And I recognize your concerns about angering / frustrating / losing users because a tool
> does not seem to work, because that's how I feel about Blobs.

I'm not sure what problems you've had.  Blobs should have been clearly
labeled experimental until
recently. I wasn't comfortable using them in production until 3.9 and
I put a lot of effort into making
them production quality in 3.9.  FWIW, we are using them extensively
now.  I know some problems
people have had were with their integration into applications,
especially wrt copy and paste.  There's
only so much that ZODB itself can do about that.

...

> I don't think that any of the ZODB scripts are in good shape. There's nothing I can confidently
> give to a system administrator. There's an old Wiki page of documentation for a handful of the
> tools, and that's about it. At least 'repozo' has good and useful information to spit out when
> you use the '-h' / '—help' switch.

I agree with the sentiment. There's a lot in ZODB that doesn't have
the quality I'd like. I'm making
progress. For example, I've improved zeopack this year. When I did, I
also added tests.

> I'm not sure whose expectations you're satisfying as the items in ZODB.scripts are a wild and
> inconsistent mess. It's been trial and error just to find ones that seem to work, outside of repozo.

I didn't add those scripts. I've been hesitant to remove scripts
because I don't know who might be
using them, or who might find them useful. In general, I'm working on
bits of ZODB at a time, trying to
clean up the bits I touch without necessarily demolishing everything I
don't like.

I do think some scripts are more important than others.  If an
analysis script is wrong, it's not a big
deal.  If backup (or packing) is wrong, that's a serious problem.

I think the biggest issue that you're touching on is the lack of up to
date and maintained
documentation.  This is the biggest problem for the ZODB community,
IMO.  It isn't the
biggest  ZODB issue for ZC, which is why I haven't gotten to it *yet*.

Jim

-- 
Jim Fulton