[Zope-dev] quibble about directory structure

[Joel Berendzen]

Dear Zope Developers,

I'm manager of a development project for a scientific network-based
compute appliance that will be Zope-based.  I have only limited
experience with Zope (starting with 2.0.0a2) but I'm an experienced
programmer and sysadmin.  I'm getting to be experienced with installing
new Zope releases, which is where my quibble comes from.

My quibble is that doing updates to Zope is harder than it should
be because of the directory structure.  Life would be sweet in Zopeville
if everything that varies from installation to installation would be kept
in var.  This way, I could simply keep a var directory in a place
outside the Zope tree itself and make a symlink to it as part of the
install. Instead, I have var, Extensions, import (I think, haven't used
this feature yet), and (the worst) parts of lib/python/Products that
have to be moved with each install. 

I would like to suggest that the Extensions and import directory
be moved to var in future releases, that var/Products be created
and put on the search path, and that the rest of the tree be specified
as read-only.   I can of course do this myself with symlinks (and I
will), I think a change in the official distribution might save us
all a little trouble.

Cheers,
  Joel
  


-- 

      Joel Berendzen
      Biophysics Group (P-21), D454      Phone: +1.505.665.2552
      Los Alamos National Laboratory     FAX:   +1.505.665.4507
      Los Alamos, NM 87545, USA.         email: joelb@lanl.gov