[Zope-dev] Re: ploneout - Or how using zc.buildout for a common Zope2 project might look like

[Reinout van Rees]

Martin Aspeli wrote:
>> Unless Utopia really exists I think developers all have their own
>> thoughts about setting up their development environment. 
> 
> Maybe. Except if we (the plone core developers) use ploneout then we are 
> all using the same environment, and we duplicate less work.

Same reasoning I had with instancemanager, so I agree. I explicitly made
it reasonable easy to set some defaults to have it fit everyone's
favourite way of ordering his stuff. Instance in ~/instances/philips by
default, but Jean-Paul can set it to a default of ~/Sites/philips, for
instance.

But even with that level of adaptability-to-individual-taste, not
everyone uses it for our zest projects. Rocky not, iirc, for instance.
Neither nouri.

So: "it duplicates less work" and "we all would have the same
environment" are great reasons, but they don't always work :-)

>> Again most developers are pretty demanding about setting up a
>> development environment. Here at Zest most of us are comfortable with
>> instancemanager.
> 
> That's possibly something to do with the fact that you wrote it :)
> 
> I'm not saying it isn't great, and there's no reason why people 
> shouldn't use it if it works for them. But zc.buildout predates it, 
> seems to be adopted more and more in the Zope 3 world (including people 
> like grok), seems more flexible to me... and I like it. :)

Well, predates it... Theoretically, yes. But in practice it was some
internal zope corp tool. I only first noticed it when Jim gave a talk
about the new improved egg-using version at 2006's Europython. Later
that same day I gave a lightning talk about instancemanager. So at least
to my viewpoint, it has the same age.

http://vanrees.org/weblog/archive/2006/07/04/jim-fulton-zc-buildout

http://vanrees.org/weblog/archive/2006/07/04/europython-lightning-talks

> Ultimately, though, it doesn't really matter what people use. However, 
> at the upcoming Amsterdam sprint, I intend to ask people to do this:
> 
>   $ svn co https://svn.plone.org/svn/plone/ploneout/trunk plone3
>   $ cd plone3
>   $ python bootstrap.py
>   $ ./bin/buildout
> 
> and they will have a Plone 3 instance to develop from. I won't be 
> helping anyone set up Plone in another way, simply because from previous 
> sprints I know that we waste an awful lot of time on something so simple 
>   as getting people to symlinks eggs around (yipes). During Plone 3 
> development, dealing with two bundles (which meant each review bundle 
> needed two bundles as well) that explicitly check out various eggs was a 
> pain in the ass as well.

Something that automates this is very useful. I started instancemanager
for the same reason: to do away with hour-long bughunts just because
someone had an old product lying around.

>From what I understand, Jean-Paul has an instancemanager configuration
that builds a nice plone 3.0 instance from the normal, unmodified bundle
with just a few lines of instancemanager configuration.

Just keep the bundle sane and everything should be OK. Either
buildout/ploneout or instancemanager can help. The goal is the same.


Reinout

-- 
Reinout van Rees                       r.van.rees @ zestsoftware.nl
http://vanrees.org/weblog/                  http://zestsoftware.nl/
"Military engineers build missiles. Civil engineers build targets."