[Zope-dev] Advocating the splitting of Zope in subpackages

[Martijn Faassen]

Andrew M. Kuchling wrote:
> Lalo Martins writes:
> >Folks, it's about time (or past time) Zope is splitted from its
> >monolithical package into the real packages it uses. I'm facing
> >similar problems when using ZPublisher.Client in gnope.

> Agreed.
[snip]
> While completely packagizing Zope is a big job, it does seem possible
> to take it in little increments, and splitting out some of the more
> useful components would be a start.

My 'aye' added to the chorus. Some advantages:

  * it's the Right Thing To Do (can help cleaning up the code).

  * could help elucidate some interfaces more clearly.

  * the sub packages can also be open-source developed by the people
    who don't need Zope but want to use the sub package in isolation. They
    will probably exercise other parts of the code and may find problems
    and interesting new features to add that Zope-users won't. This will
    on the long term also be better for Zope as a whole.

  * clear modularization will probably also aid in the understanding of
    Zope as a whole, as each component can be studied in isolation.

  * you can more easily swap out a component for a new one.

  * it's more easy to write automated test suites for the isolated
    packages.

Of course, Digital Creations is already aware of these things; Zope is
already heavily modular. We run the danger now though that things will
start to merge together into a mess, so being explicit about packaging
the components could help a lot here.

Perhaps we should start a Zope SubPackages Wiki and discuss this further?
People can rip various packages out of Zope and test them in isolation,
and we can then offer them as downloadables on the Zope site. The Wiki
can serve as a pointer to the various packages out there.

Regards,

Martijn