[Zope-dev] Zope on Windows: enhancements proposed

[Richard Jones]

We've got a wonderful zope control panel (which installs into the standard 
windows Control Panel) and zope service which we'll be making available in 
binary and source form this week. Like the Mac OS X controller, this is 
simply a trivial re-branding extension of our work in supporting the 
usability of our Bizar Shop product.

The windows controller works on win95/win98/NT/win2k. It controls a "real" 
windows service on platforms were services are run (NT/win2k), and otherwise 
controls a "service daemon" which stays in the system tray. We'll call this 
service "Zope", and its job is to lauch "python [script] [args]" with some 
Zope-specific environment fiddling (INSTANCE_HOME env, cd ${SOFTWARE_HOME}, 
STUPID_LOG_FILE env).

The current method of starting Zope as a windows service using 
PythonService.exe is kludgy, mostly because of the unnecessary layer of 
python. The Zope binary distribution's use of PythonService.exe does the same 
thing that our Zope service does (in the end), which is to lauch "python 
z2.py [args]".

We'd like to propose that the service distributed with Zope move over to 
using our code.

Our control panel will be able to control "Zope (WebSite)", but we probably 
won't offer the ability to configure it (editing the z2[s].py file in-place 
is possible - we do that now - but it's rather hackish).

So, best scenario is that Zope ships with the controller and our service. 
Worst scenario is that the controller is downloaded separately and can only 
stop/start PythonService. In the second case, we'd still ship our service and 
install it - meaning that there'd be two Zope services in the service 
manager, but at least the controller, which appears in the control panel, 
would still be able to fully control Zope.


As a separate issue - we're curious about the naming of the Zope installation 
- why is it called WebSite (and the Zope service "Zope (WebSite)")? The name 
clashes with another product that's fairly well-known in the windows 
community originally from O'Reilly: http://www.oreilly.com/software/index.html
... and since Zope is a fairly distinctive name ...


    Richard

ps. happy to put this up as a project if required.