[Zope-CMF] tools, utilities, and getToolByName

[Wichert Akkerman]

The tools/utilities/getToolByName debate seems to have petered out
without reaching a real consensus. Since I'm trying to get a next Plone
3 beta out this is becoming somewhat problematic for me, so I'm trying
to get an understanding of various peoples understanding.

There appears to be a consensus to at least undeprecate getToolByName,
for several reasons: it is used by almost every product out there, and
deprecation it for what are only aesthetic reasons (everyone should
move the Zope3 APIs).

There appears to be a consensus amongst Plone developers to keep the
Zope 3 (get|query)Utility functions clear of any acquisition wrapping
magic. This effectively means reverting the tools-as-utilities work,
since the tools need an acquisition context as they are not proper
utilities. This is driven by two factors: a desire to stay consistent
with the Zope 3 API and the increasing amount of magic code needed
to do the acquisition wrapping when dealing with multiple site managers,
some of which may not have any knowledge of CMF. Other people (Jens and
Yuppie for example) disagree strongly and want to supplement or improve
the site manager logic to handle acquisition wrapping.

Putting my Plone release manager hat on I need to know what we can
use for the next beta, which want to release in the next 10 days.
I fear that we will not resolve this fully before then; however if
there is indeed a consensus to undeprecate getToolByName I think
we should switch back to using that in Plone. Otherwise our release
is going to be an ever-shifting target.

Wichert.

-- 
Wichert Akkerman <wichert at wiggy.net>    It is simple to make things.
http://www.wiggy.net/                   It is hard to make things simple.