[Zope-dev] List of packages in the ZTK

[Martijn Faassen]

Hey,

Fabio Tranchitella wrote:
> it is evident that there is no consensus on the list of packages that are
> part of the Zope Toolkit. As Gary suggested me, it looks like the concept
> of ZTK is different for each developer and it is more or less "the packages
> I use and I care about".

In a way the consensus should be reflected by the list you mention:

http://docs.zope.org/zopetoolkit/about/packages.html

 > We need a policy to define the ZTK in an explicit way, otherwise we
 > will never get a *real* ZTK KGS that can be used to build applications
 > and the whole concept of ZTK will always be fuzzy.

We have a list. I propose that in order to stop long discussions about 
what should be in this list, we just start with what's in this list, by 
circular definition. :)

We need to get a procedure in place to do compat tests of what's in that 
list, dependency graph guarding of what's in that list, and locking down 
a KGS for that list. I think that since we have a list doing all these 
things is only a matter of work - there's no fundamental questions we 
need answered before we can do this work. Once the base is there we can 
expand on it.

I think what we need is a policy for adding packages into this list, and 
retiring packages from the list.

Removal: I think an informal show of hands that asks "is this package 
important?" on the mailing list is useful there. The other is a 
situation that nothing depends on that package anymore. Once those two 
are reached, I think it'd be as simple as petitioning the steering group 
to have a package removed.

Addition: this one is much tougher. New packages can get added if 
they're factored out of existing packages, that's easy. But 
fundamentally new package? We need to cross that bridge when we get to 
this. I suspect innovation for the time being will mostly be around the 
toolkit, not in it, or in the form of changes to existing packages. I 
think generally candidates for addition are packages that would change 
the way we arrange toolkit-based libraries themselves - I recall Shane's 
WSGI discussions as an example.

I realize that to build "real" apps everybody will come up with a list 
of extra packages beyond the ZTK that they feel are needed too. Let a 
thousand flowers bloom I'd say - we just need a clean, fertile soil that 
we need to maintain. We already got plants growing in the soil anyway 
(Zope 2, Grok, bfg, and lots of Zope 3 apps).

And of course there's some philosophy behind what's in the list now: 
it's a set of libraries shared by Zope 2, Zope 3 (whatever that is) and 
Grok. That's not the only answer and it's not quite the correct answer 
even, but philosophers spend way more time trying to pin down far more 
important concepts than the nature of the ZTK. Reality, mind, knowledge, 
good and evil are some examples. They haven't agreed yet either and 
they've had thousands of years to argue. In reality we still find those 
concepts useful. So let it be with the ZTK.

Regards,

Martijn