[Zope3-dev] Development methodology (Re: [Zope-CMF] Future CMF) (rant)

[Jeffrey P Shell]

On Wednesday, October 9, 2002, at 02:49  PM, Chris Withers wrote:

> R. David Murray wrote:
>> True, but the more documentation we have when we *do* get to that
>> point the faster those additional contributions will come in.  And
>> despite the doc requirements you bemoan, Zope3 is *not* documented
>> well enough yet (IMO).
>
> Totally agreed.
>
> Probably the main reason I've made no real Zop 3 contributions of late 
> is that it's too difficult to get into. I think this is due to lack of 
> documentation.

I think that most of the work seems to revolve around sprints, and 
their haven't been any lately.  Plus, with how much time I don't have 
in a day, it's hard for me to get up to speed and even harder to take 
ownership of a subsystem, no matter how much I want to.  I'm fairly 
certain this is the case with other individuals or even groups.

> That said, I'm not sure long and convoluted proposals (which I never 
> have time to read properly ;-) help either.

They help more than arbitrary things being added in because they're 
convenient to one person.  I don't know if proposals have to be 
convoluted, or even long.  Python's been using PEP's fairly 
successfully, and Perl's using RFC's (at least when it comes to Perl 
6's development).  I like those systems because they are a little more 
formalized than the fishbowl (I like that PEPs/RFC's have numbers), and 
seem not to get abandoned or lost as easily as Wiki pages tend to do 
(even with all the great organization work that's gone in to ZWiki and 
Zope.org's flavoring of ZWiki).

> What I really need is a 'beginners guide for potential developers' 
> showing me the overall shape of the thing so I know where to best 
> pitch in.

The shape keeps changing, but seems to be settling down somewhat.  CVS 
needs to be cleaned up though - last time I checked Zope 3 out, there 
were plenty of empty directories left behind by package 
reorganizations.  Trying to find the right 'Folder' or OFS 
implementation is tricky.

> It's be nice if I knew where and how to document Zope 3 too. Maybe we 
> need a CMS for that? Dogfood eating anyone? (Just as long as it 
> doesn't end up like cmf.zope.org, please god!)

Isn't there a 'docs' directory with Zope 3?  Documentation needs to be 
kept separate from ideas and proposals, which is part of what makes the 
Wiki a scary place to go into sometimes (it's hard to tell whether 
something has happened, may happen, is not going to happen, just sortof 
happened, or is just a pipe dream from early meditations).