[Zope-CMF] Re: state of GenericSetup trunk and branches

[yuppie]

Hi Rob!


Rob Miller wrote:
> yuppie wrote:
>>
>> - Why is it necessary to use version numbers from VERSION.txt? AFAICS 
>> it does not make much sense to keep profile version numbers in sync 
>> with product version numbers. New profiles should have an explicit 
>> version in metadata.xml, old profiles can use '0' as version number. No?
> 
> i could go either way.  i thought that some folks, with products that 
> had fast release cycle, might choose to use the product version as the 
> profile version, so the product version is used as a failover if a 
> profile version isn't present.  i don't feel strongly, though, and would 
> be fine to remove this if others disagree.

Well. I'd prefer to have *one* obvious and explicit solution. The 
failover adds extra code that needs to be maintained and makes it less 
obvious where the version number comes from.

>> - Why uses ProfileMetadata the old ImportConfiguratorBase? 
>> ImportConfiguratorBase is just not deprecated because GenericSetup 
>> still uses it in some places. But the goal was to get rid of it, not 
>> to add new files that depend on it.
> 
> since it wasn't deprecated, or even commented, i didn't know the goal 
> was to get rid of it.  sorry.

I am sorry. Looks like you spent a lot of time on figuring out how it 
works and writing documentation :(

I wrote that code long ago, replacing the old pattern still used in 
DCWorkflow's WorkflowDefinitionConfigurator. Later I figured out that 
this extra framework is less flexible and not much easier to use than 
the generic DOM API. All new code is DOM based and a big part of the old 
code is converted.

If you agree that this code can be removed in the long run, we should 
figure out how to document this decision.

>> - Why is exporting metadata.xml not supported?
> 
> because metadata.xml is not actually site configuration.  it's metadata 
> on the profile itself.  there's not any way, nor should there be, IMO, 
> that the information provided in the metadata file can be changed on a 
> live site in such a way that it would be exported.  perhaps it would be 
> better to change the metadata to an .ini file, or some other config 
> syntax, to distinguish it more clearly from the rest of the profile.

If it is pure registration information, why don't we extend the ZCML 
directive? But AFAICS data like the version number belongs to the 
profile itself and it might be useful to add timestamp based version 
numbers to exported profiles.

>> - How are profile dependencies specified, where are they used?
> 
> dependencies are specified in metadata.xml; syntax can be found in 
> test_profile_metadata.py.  unfortunately, they're not used yet... this 
> was a goal that we didn't actually get to.  :-(.

'DEPENDENCY 1' and 'DEPENDENCY 2' don't really explain how to specify 
dependencies: Would we use identifiers like 
'Products.CMFCalendar:default'? Is it possible to use version numbers?

As long as these questions are not resolved I would disable the support 
for dependencies completely.


Cheers,

	Yuppie