[Zope-CMF] Re: trouble applying extension profiles

[yuppie]

Hi Rob!


Rob Miller wrote:
> maybe i'm missing something fundamental, but i'm having trouble figuring 
> out how i'm supposed to apply extension profiles to my site.  the 
> intended mechanism is clear enough; set the active configuration to be 
> the desired profile and then execute runAllImportSteps on the setup 
> tool.  the apparent fuzziness of the boundary between the base profile 
> and the extension profiles seem to be getting in my way, however.
> 
> my base profile is a default Plone site, which does a bunch of 
> configuration and adds a few pieces of content using the "structure" 
> folder mechanism that is supported by CMFCore's 
> StructureFolderWalkingAdapter.  this works w/o problem.  then i specify 
> an extension profile to be the active configuration and again 
> runAllImportSteps.  the content is purged by default, which seems odd, 
> and it is not recreated b/c the StructureFolderWalkingAdapter is now 
> looking for a 'structure' folder in the extension profile, which is the 
> wrong place.

This is a known issue, as Jens already mentioned.

> i see three possible ways around this, which i'll list in order from my 
> least to most preferred:
> 
> - we could have extension profiles not purge any content by default.  it 
> seems strange that they do.  perhaps this is supposed to be the case 
> already, and either it's just not happening or there's something i've 
> missed within my setup that is causing it to not be the case.

That's the current policy. Setup handlers have to make sure they don't 
purge anything if no related setup files are in the current profile.

> - allow extension profiles to specify which of the base profile's import 
> steps they depend on, so that only these can be run, instead of the 
> current situation where, AFAICT, you have to either run them all or 
> manually examine the profile and select the steps to run
> 
> - draw a more clear distinction between the base profile and the 
> extension profiles.  instead of having the extension profiles 
> piggy-backing on the base profile, extension profiles would explicitly 
> define all of their own import steps, so that they can be applied 
> cleanly on top of existing sites w/o becoming quite so muddled w/ the 
> default configuration.  this would also make it easier to implement an 
> uninstall process that would remove the extension profile from the site.

These solutions will create new problems regarding the procedure for 
exports and re-imports.


Cheers,

	Yuppie