[ZF] Thoughts about the process

[Philipp von Weitershausen]

On 27 Aug 2007, at 22:43 , Chris McDonough wrote:
> On Aug 27, 2007, at 4:28 PM, Philipp von Weitershausen wrote:
>
>>> - There was a document describing what is expected of a "zope"  
>>> package (it has its own
>>>   setup.py, it lists its dependencies properly, it is released  
>>> with "real" version numbers,
>>>   it's registered in the cheeseshop.. or whatever).
>>
>> Precisely that is what I've been trying to accomplish with my  
>> "Guide for maintaining software in the Zope repository" [1].
>
> Excellent, thank you!  That looks about perfect to me, exactly what  
> I was thinking of.  Very nice.

Thanks, though it's probably far from perfect yet. I do hope though  
that with enough feedback from everybody, it can get there eventually.

>> You're right that eggs alleviate the problem of a "core"  
>> definition somewhat. I still think it quite necessary to define  
>> "working sets", in other words, a definition of packages and their  
>> versions that are known to work well together. We can't expect  
>> every Zope developer to figure this out by him/herself. I'm not  
>> saying there has to be *one* working set definition. The working  
>> sets should just be community-managed, be version-controlled and  
>> be treated as releases when it comes to "blessing" them for the  
>> rest of the world.
>>
>>
>> To summarize, I agree with you that ensuring a common process for  
>> the individual packages does most of the trick. This is what my  
>> guide is aiming to do. Apart from that, we need to figure out the  
>> working set bit. I think a technical discussion is needed here  
>> (not appropriate for this list).
>
> I have no opinion on "working sets" (as opposed to releases) but I  
> do agree it's not appropriate for this list to have a discussion  
> about that here.  I think the best we might hope for here is a  
> consensus (or nonconsensus ;-) that actively managing packages (or  
> more precisely, "distributions" in the setuptools sense) and their  
> interdependencies without regard of how any particular SVN  
> repository is arranged is important enough to be "blessed" in any  
> development process we decide on.

Well said. As can be gathered from my earlier comments, I do believe  
that we should bless this subject in our process.