[Zope-dev] "ZTK" futures: one big package?

[Chris Withers]

Chris McDonough wrote:
> Given that this suggestion has been met with skepticism, let me try another 
> tact.  Instead of thinking about it this way, could we think about it as 
> *deflating* the current set of zope.* packages that do not currently have a 
> meaningful life of their own into a single setuptools distribution named "ZTK". 
 >
> This "ZTK" distribution would *not* include packages that already have a life of 
> their own outside Zope such as zope.interface, zope.component, 
> zope.configuration, zope.proxy, ZODB, etc.  These packages would continue to 
> have their own release cycles.

Yay! Big +1 from me...

> Over time, we'd tease out the dependencies of packages that live in the ZTK 
> distribution, making them useful outside without any dependency on the ZTK.  The 
> names of these packages could be arbitrary (they wouldn't need to retain their 
> old "zope.*" names).  Some backwards dependency shims would be added to the ZTK 
> to prevent old imports from breaking, and the ZTK distribution would then just 
> have a dependency on the thing that got broken out.

Well, if they just used their old zope.* names, no shims would be 
needed, right? If it works, don't break it so it doesn't work ;-)

> I'm thinking that this would simplify things greatly for people who want to be 
> consumers of "truly independent" Zope packages.  There'd be exactly N of them 
> available for download (where N is much less than 100, more like 20), plus the 
> ZTK, which would have the rest of the pile in it over time.  If someone wanted 
> to use a forked version of a package that lived in the ZTK distribution, they'd 
> either do so by teasing out the dependencies and making it "truly independent" 
> or they'd just reroll a custom version of the entire ZTK distribution.
> 
> Does this make any sense?

yes, totally in agreement.

Chris

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