[Zope-CMF] Re: GenericSetup extension profile import step mis-feature

[Matt]

On 8/1/07, Martin Aspeli <optilude at gmx.net> wrote:
>
>
>
> yuppie-3 wrote:
> >
> >
> >> For an import operation, you run:
> >>
> >>  - All steps that came from the current base profile
> >>  - All steps that came from explicit, transitive dependencies of the
> >> current
> >> base profile (provided we get support for declaring profile dependencies)
> >
> > ???
> >
> > Base profiles have per definition no dependencies. No?
> >
>
> Probably, though in Plone, for example, it'd be very useful to be able to
> say "when installing Plone, please also install extension profiles from
> Archetypes and CMFEditions", where those are dependencies. That's mostly
> from a code-management point of view, though. Anyway, that functionality
> doesn't exist yet, so let's not quibble.
>
>
While I like the idea of the freedom from constantly checking xml
diffs of updated products' base profiles against my current base
profile, I think that installing extension profiles of product
dependencies is a bit heavy handed unless extension profiles are known
to be independent of each other in what they modify in a site. It
seems more relevant to me to be explicitly calling import steps from
extension profiles of other products in the order that you want them
to be called (or not called).

As it is, doing diffs and merges between extension profiles and a base
profile (including trying to figure out whether I really do want to
run another products importVarious scariness) to attempt to get a new
base profile that is supposed to reflect the desired base profile of
my site is frustrating and feels like the wrong workflow anyway. What
I would like to be able to do is to start with a vanilla base profile,
then apply particular import steps of relevant extension profiles,
then export that state as my new base profile. Updating a product
would simply mean running the steps you want again, checking the
consistency of your site, then if happy, exporting that state as your
new base profile.

Problem is, for plone I can't even get an exported profile of a
vanilla plone that was setup with the default base profile to work as
a new base profile - mostly because various imperative configuration
steps have altered the site in ways that get reflected partially in
the export (but not fully).