Barriers to Zope popularity: Part 2: source control
Having been using Zope for the past 8months or so I see two potential reasons as to why more people at my work havn't taken to Zope. Barrier 1: WYSIWYG editing (see previous mail) Barrier 2: Source Control. Initially I was concerned about the whole ODB thing. Now I trust it to some extent however source control is more than just backup or versioning. Its about tracablity in a development process. I work with a software development group and all our code is under source control and any work done can be traced to a person and a time. Zope can't do this. Any file based web server allows this (however then you don't get the distributed editing etc). Possible solution: Allow some sort of hooks into the versioning mechanism. What would be nice is in the case of a save or undo of a version, those changes could be mirrored in source control. How? - Some sort of export on changes. This goes into a designated dir that represents the site. A script then gets run that does the equivilent commit into the soruce control program. Different adapters with different scripts for CVS, ClearCase etc. - Have somesort of folder/XML format? Instead of just one big XML file like export gives you then maybe a folder heirachy with special files to represent the properties of Zope folders. This would allow for much better diffs in the source control prog. - Allow imports from such a format when you need to reverse changes or do something funny from source control. - I think only restricting this to versions is ok because non versioned changes might pickup all the changes that occur with user data, counters etc. And with a policy that all changes have to be through a version (is this enforcable in zope???) then all is well. All the "user" data changes such counters etc could be accounted for in source control by doing a periodic whole site export and having this committed to the source control system thus ensuring that whats in source control is a reasonably accurate representation of the site. I know there are many more barriers but these are two I've been thinking a lot about and I think are quite important.
I am in the process of convincing my management to convert to Zope for several of our internal tracking applications. The lack of source control is the number one barrier to my progress. As Dylan pointed out, it's not merely about backup and versioning. It's about tracking and accountability for changes to the system. I am considering investing the considerable time and effort to integrate CVS version control into Zope. I am very interested in knowing if anyone else is considering or already working on such a product. I would also like to encourage more discussion about source control, as I also see this as a sizeable barrier to some people's acceptance of Zope. Jonothan Farr RealNetworks, Inc. jfarr@real.com
On Thu, Sep 23, 1999 at 11:39:11AM -0700, Jonothan Farr wrote:
I am in the process of convincing my management to convert to Zope for several of our internal tracking applications. The lack of source control is the number one barrier to my progress. As Dylan pointed out, it's not merely about backup and versioning. It's about tracking and accountability for changes to the system.
I would also like to encourage more discussion about source control, as I also see this as a sizeable barrier to some people's acceptance of Zope.
Jonothan, you've nailed the _one_ thing that's always bugged me about big integrated projects like Zoep, Frontier, and the like: there are 30 years of development invested in tools like vi, emacs, CVS, RCS, lint, and the like... and you can't use them, because all the code you care about is "inside" that big amorphous container. I understand the performance issues involved, but I have to agree with your point of view: the largest single use of computers in the telephony business isn't the switching, it's what's termed OAM&P -- operations, administration, maintenance, and provisioning: that is, the _management_ of the work, not the work itself. I'm not remotely dissing Zope or the work these folks have put in on it, but I have to agree with you -- to bring in another analogy, it's like the difference between a program, a programming project, and a programming systems project that Fred Brooks makes in his _Mythical_ Man_Month -- and if you haven't read this yet, folks, drop your keyboards and go get it. There isn't yet the facility that I can see for project management around Zop that I think there will have to be. Whether that facility _needs_ to be externally accessible is a question, but I suspect it might be; there's a _lot_ of installed base of other stuff out there. Food for thought for the development team. Cheers, -- jr 'hoist on the petard of your own success...' a -- Jay R. Ashworth jra@baylink.com Member of the Technical Staff Buy copies of The New Hackers Dictionary. The Suncoast Freenet Give them to all your friends. Tampa Bay, Florida http://www.ccil.org/jargon/ +1 813 790 7592
participants (3)
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Jay R. Ashworth -
Jay, Dylan -
Jonothan Farr