[Zope-dev] Re: Why third_party/docutils?

[Tres Seaver]

Andreas Jung wrote:

> You're still not getting the point. Z2 shipped and Z3 ships with a 
> *stripped* down version of Docutils where only the "docutils"
> subfolder is used. Now the *whole* package is included which makes it
> necessary to adjust the paths. Moving this as a whole to lib/python
> does *not* solve the need to adjust the path using sitecustomize.py
> or by adding paths to runzope&friends.

I don't get this.  Why couldn't we just delete the *entire* 
stripped-down 'docutils' package and replace it with the *whole* package 
*in exactly the same location*?  E.g. (assuming we had not already 
munged things):

   $ cd Zope-2.7-branch/lib/python/docutils
   $ find . -type "f" | grep -v CVS | xargs cvs rm -f
   $ cvs commit -m " - Blow away stripped down docutils."
   $ tar xzf /tmp/docutils-the-whole-enchilada.tar.gz
   $ find . -type "f" | grep -v CVS | xargs cvs add
   $ cvs commit -m " - Add current docutils."

What would break (or would have broken) had we done that?  Another 
option would be to remove the 'docutils' directory *in the CVS 
repository" and replace it with a symlink to the "canonical vendor import".

> Docutils should be kept *somewhere* as a *whole* which makes updating
>  much easier. Moving the package to lib/python does *not* solve
> Stefans problem which is maybe only a problem on Stefan's side (I
> don't know).

The problem is that having to munge sitecustomize.py or the PYTHONPATH 
in order to get 'lib/python/thirdparty' included messes up *lots* of things.

> I would appreciate it if people in the community could come up with 
> reasonable proposals and ideas how to solve problems instead of
> fighting against solutions being made. Especially the Z2 community is
> currently in a state where there is much talking and crying of people
> about Z2 issues that sux or must be resolved but there is really only
>  a small, small of people really doing something substantial work.
> 
> So looking back at this issue: the solution is working except for
> Stefan and if there is a problem anyone should suggest a reasonable
> problem or just fix the original problem (maintainability of
> Docutils) in a better way than I did. Otherwise we should keep it as
>  it is or revert to an older version that has not the problems. But
> in this case I won't care about Docutils in future versions.

The solution is *not* working;  it addes complexity and brittleness, for 
little gain that anybody else can see.  Jim has already pointed this 
fact out, and asked for an explanation of the rationale.

Let's work out something which:

   - allows us to use the "canonical" version of docutils

   - doesn't impose unneeded restrictions on how people configure the
     Python with which they run Zope.


Tres.
-- 
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Tres Seaver                                tseaver at zope.com
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