[Zope-dev] Defining Zope 3.

[Shane Hathaway]

Martijn Faassen wrote:
> You're right of course, I apologize for going that way. I have little 
> excuse for that.

You've taken a lot of heat in this thread.  I hope that doesn't bother
you too much, because I think you're an extremely valuable team member.
 This kind of discussion is hard, but it is an important part of any
mature project.

I find it rather encouraging that so many people are participating in
this thread.  Clearly, the Zope project has many dedicated contributors.

I don't know how valuable my opinion about all of this is, but I'll
suggest it in case it's useful.

In my mind, I've been thinking of Zope Toolkit as the subset of Zope 3
that has well-managed dependencies.  Zope 3 already has good code and
excellent test coverage, but what's controversial about it is the mad
package dependency graph as you reach inside zope.app.

Given that definition, Zope Toolkit will start relatively small, since
much of Zope 3 does not yet qualify.  However, as people refine
packages, the packages will be reconsidered for inclusion in the Zope
Toolkit, and the Zope Toolkit will hopefully grow into something similar
to what we currently know as Zope 3.

Zope 3 can't die; people are relying on it and maintaining it.  The
maintainers are doing a rather good job too, IMHO.  The checkins list
has been active lately.  We don't have to create any more Zope 3
tarballs, but we should keep up the KGS.

The Zope Toolkit will be the subset that's good for building
applications, web sites, and frameworks.  Zope 3 will be designed only
for building applications and web sites.

I'll be able to recommend Zope Toolkit to friends without hesitation.
They will be able to learn the ZTK in small steps because the dependency
graph will be comprehensible.  It will never be necessary to learn all
of ZTK to be productive.  Many will start with the ZTK and eventually
realize they only need a small subset of ZTK.  They will be happy when
they discover how easy it is to use a subset of ZTK.

Zope 3 is the thing I'll still recommend to people who decide they want
to drink all of Zope in at once.  Some people have good reasons to want
that, after all.

Shane