Right. What I'm saying is that this should be the default. Sensible defaults is sometimes all it takes to get something adopted. Just look at that Plone thang ;).
Yeah. I'd be happy to move the Data.fs directory to var/${part_name} under the main buildout directory. I'd also be happy to make a script in bin/ in the main buildout directory to start the instance, but I am not sure what to do about Windows. Maybe make a batchfile as well that calls runzope.bat?
On another tangent, I'd like to direct your attention to grokproject (http://cheeseshop.python.org/pypi/grokproject). It's an idiot-proof way of setting up new buildouts that have grok and a custom development package preconfigured. It uses paste.script to create a raw buildout directory with a bunch of default and boilerplate things. It then bootstraps the buildout and builds the buildout. It's not rocket science, but it's made the whole "how do I get started with grok" thing a lot easier.
Interesting. I like that idea, and we should definitely consider using PasteScript to create ploneout-like instances once we stabilise the Ploneout layout. For those who don't follow, that'd mean you'd do: $ easy_install ZopeSkel ZopeSkel contains various pastescript skeletons for zope and plone development; we could use a different package of course, but having them all in one makes sense to me. It will install PasteScript etc as well $ paster create -t plone_project And that asks you a bunch of questions and you get a new buildout.
I could envision that buildout-based deployment for end users (who don't necessarily tweak buildout.cfg etc.) could look a lot like that. Perhaps it's worth exploring this in a general manner, so that grok, Plone, and other zc.buildout consumers could share the same platform for end-user installation.
Indeed. Though to be fair, I'm not sure how much there would be to share, if you basically have a PasteScript template that creates a buildout.cfg and the buildout bootstrap.
I see some common goals to tackle, for example:
- off-line installation (bootstrapping a buildout from already packaged eggs instead of downloading from the internet)
Yes. One thing pretty high on my list would be a version of the Zope 2 installation that downloaded a tarball rather than from svn (the svn checkout is slooooooow) and/or could use an existing tarball or even an existing zope2 installation.
- a Windows installer
Yeah. As I said before, we need someone to own this on Windows. Martin