[ZODB-Dev] Persistent module notes and proposal

[Jim Fulton]

Persistent modules are an attempt to support management of Python
modules in ZODB.  There is an initial implementation in ZODB 4 that
is used in Zope 3. Because we've suspended work on ZODB 4, we will soon
be backporting this feature to ZODB 3.3.

I've written up some notes at:

   http://zope.org/Wikis/ZODB/PersistentModules

The purposes of these notes include:

   - Laying out goals and use cases

   - Capturing issues and design notes

The notes will evolve over time. They are available as
a wiki page to make it easier for people to contribute. The
notes are also checked into the CVS source tree to be readily
available to peopple working on the code.

One particular issue has to do with the scope of persistent modules.
I propose that, at least for Zope 3, persistent modules should contain
only software and that the state of persistent modules should be fully
expressed by their source. This implied that persistent modules in Zope 3
should not contain any objects that are mutated outside of the execution
of the modules, such as registries, counters, etc.

Comments, questions, and contributions, here or on the wiki page
are welcomed.

Jim

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