[Zope-dev] PATCH: Expanded "access" file

[Brian Lloyd]

> >>Hm.  I don't think this could be classed as a "minor" 
> change, however,
> >>since it has impact on ownership, for example.  What's the 
> path of the user
> >>folder which is above "/", for example?  The whole thing is 
> useless if
> >>these extra users can't be owners, and the ownership 
> machinery right now
> >>wants an access path.  I think perhaps we should go the 
> fishbowl route on
> >>this, if only to make sure that Jim doesn't have a heart 
> attack when he
> >>gets back.  :)
> >
> >Looks like I was wrong.  This was in fact quite a minor 
> patch.  I've only
> >tested this lightly so far, but if anyone else wants to try 
> it out, here it
> >is.  

Hi all -

I think that this is _definitely_ the kind of thing that 
should be done in the fishbowl on dev.zope.org. Why? Because 
while it may be a "minor patch" in terms of lines of code, just 
applying the patch causes a number of problems that have nothing 
to do with software per se. They are the same problems that I get 
beaten about on a daily basis for everything that has ever been 
added to Zope to date :^)  They are the problems that dev.zope.org
is being designed to solve:

  o There is no visibility of the reason for the change. 

    What is the problem being solved? How exactly does this solve 
    it? Is it the right solution? Why did we make the decisions we
    made? Of course some discussion of these has occurred on the dev 
    list, but the only way I (or anyone else) can discover these is 
    to piece things together by searching list archives. 

  o There is no visibility of the impacts of the change.

    How does this affect ownership? Does this work with all existing
    user folder objects, or do they all need to change to support it?
    If they all need to change, shouldn't we make sure that the 
    authors of other implementation generally buy into this? What 
    other issues might there be? Again, we can only scour the 
    list archives :(

  o This would become Yet Another Undocumented Feature.

    One of the big things that the dev area is going to do is to force
    us to assess the documentation impact of changes and ensure that 
    the required documentation is produced and integrated with the 
    appropriate offical or unofficial docs. I can see the expanded 
    access file change potentially having an effect on at least two 
    kinds of documentation (user/admin guides and developer materials
    regarding how to implement new kinds of user folders). 


The structure of projects in the dev area is such that a finished 
project tells a story. What was the problem? What was the solution? 
How was it done? What documentation or other resources were created 
as a result? All of those things are available in one place once a 
project is complete.



Brian Lloyd        brian@digicool.com
Software Engineer  540.371.6909              
Digital Creations  http://www.digicool.com