[Zope3-Users] Attn Jim Fulton: Buildout builder

[Jim Fulton]

I replied to this privately. This has gotten so much discussion, I  
think I'd better clarify my position.

On Mar 14, 2008, at 8:27 AM, Derek Richardson wrote:

> I am the Plone champion for the buildout builder. The buildout  
> builder will be a web application, likely written in Grok, that will  
> allow textually-challenged users to configure a buildout via a GUI  
> and receive a .cfg in return.
>
> Jim, you mentioned at PSPS-2008 that you would gladly help whoever  
> championed this.


There was a misunderstanding or miscommunication.

I volunteered to help with a buildout-based installer. This is *much*  
narrower than a buildout-building GUI.  My thought was that, for a  
simple installer, there could be  GUI that asked the user some high- 
level configuration questions and then ran a buildout included with  
the software to set up instances.  This is similar to what we're doing  
for deployments at ZC where we have high-level non-buildout  
configuration files that collect options that control instance  
installs. The instance installs are actually done by running buildouts.

I have about as much interest in a GUI to help me write buildout  
configurations as I have in a GUI to help me write Python scripts. :)

I do see potential benefits of having GUIs or other automation tools  
to help people get started assuming that the scope of these tools is  
very narrow. They are only either to help people get started or for  
people who's needs will never be anything but simple.

JIm

--
Jim Fulton
Zope Corporation