[Zope3-dev] Re: More thoughts on packaging

[Paul Winkler]

On Fri, Feb 20, 2004 at 10:10:00AM -0500, Shane Hathaway wrote:
> On Fri, 20 Feb 2004, Martijn Faassen wrote:
> 
> > Those people who don't like ZCML because it's too verbose can design 
> > their own better 'compact' syntax and convert to ZCML from that. I'd be 
> > very curious to see those efforts and may even participate. Those who 
> > don't like ZCML as it's not Python..well, they'll have to change their 
> > minds. :)
> 
> I'll note that our configuration strategy for Zope 2 has always been to
> configure things through the web.  This mode of operation is highly
> effective for complex things.  A GUI prompts for information, while a
> written language requires some level of fluency to be effective.

OTOH, I've found the TTW configuration for zope 2 leads to maintenance
nightmares when you have multiple systems (e.g. dev, staging, and
production).  However, this is an artifact of the implementation -
TTW configuration in zope 2 usually consists of setting properties
and security on objects, which cannot easily be separated from 
the object's data or contents.  Try to duplicate a complex 
CMF skin configuration without dragging along the contents
of the actual skin folders and you will see what I mean.
Or try to duplicate security settings for a folder without
copying the contents of the folder.

I hope that this will be much better in z3, due to much configuration
being separated into ZCML, and things like properties/annotations 
hopefully being serializable via the filesystem sync tools.
I dunno what TTW security management for z3 will look like, but 
it surely can't be any more difficult than z2 ;-)

-- 

Paul Winkler
http://www.slinkp.com