[Zope3-dev] IMPORTANT RFS: Through the Web Site Development

[Shane Hathaway]

Casey Duncan wrote:
> On Monday 13 January 2003 07:36 am, Jim Fulton wrote:
> 
>>I've written some science fiction documentation:
>>
>>   http://dev.zope.org/Zope3/ThroughTheWebSiteDevelopment
>>
>>that sketches out a model for site development in Zope 3.
>>
>>I really need feedback on this. Comments are more than welcome.
>>Feel free to comment here or on the wiki page.
> 
> 
> This to me seems like a huge diversion to handle a few special cases and 
> reinvent something we can already do through Python, ZCML and ZPT on the file 
> system. 
> 
> The curmugeon in me sees a lot of technology in here to reinvent something 
> that we as a community have spent (and continue to spend) a lot of time and 
> energy debunking.
> 
> In more concrete terms, do we we really need this for Zope 3.0? Or is it just 
> a potential "nice to have"?

Well, I think this proposal is being wildly misinterpreted. :-)

This proposal, and packaging in general, is really all about 
configuration management.  It addresses questions such as:

- How do I ensure all nodes of a ZEO cluster are running the same software?

- How do I update the software that my site is based on without losing 
local customizations?

- How do I turn my local customizations into a packaged configuration 
that can be installed on the production site?

- How do I make redistributable software with a nice "out of the box" 
experience?

- How do I allow both programmers and non-programmers to work on the 
same project, while each uses the interface they are most comfortable 
with?  Programmers often prefer a text editor, while non-programmers 
often prefer a GUI.

CMF uses the filesystem-based solution to these questions.  It fails in 
many ways.  The solution proposed is not very complicated, but 
admittedly it is nothing like Zope 2's solutions.  You really have to 
forget all Zope 2 notions of configuration management while reading the 
proposal.

Shane