[Zope-dev] lxml dependency in Zope 2.12.10 KGS

[Martin Aspeli]

On 10 September 2010 14:26, Hanno Schlichting <hanno at hannosch.eu> wrote:

> On Fri, Sep 10, 2010 at 3:17 PM, Martin Aspeli <optilude+lists at gmail.com<optilude%2Blists at gmail.com>>
> wrote:
> > If we *are* going to use a convenience pin, then surely the ability to
> > install on the world's most-used operating system has to be part of the
> > convenience. ;-)
>
> That's a lame argument. Windows is almost irrelevant for the market we
> are in - web server deployments.


Erm, you think so? Maybe we should do a poll on how many Zope / Plone
developers use Windows on the desktop. Or look at how many people download
the Windows installer. You need a dev environment, not just deployment, and
a lot of people are on Windows.


> Our own community is barely able to
> keep up providing the most basic Windows support and ensuring tests
> pass. As long as we don't have more community volunteers actually
> caring about Windows support, I won't let it be an argument to
> penalize the rest of the community.
>

When the software breaks, people go elsewhere. I didn't say Windows support
was easy, or any fun. But we have to decide: do we care about people who
have made (or are forced to make) different technology choices than us, or
do we tell them their platform is unsupported?


> > If we don't use it, we shouldn't pin it, IMHO. We found this problem
> because
> > the Zope KGS was overriding another KGS where we had pinned lxml to
> 2.2.4. I
> > don't think Zope has any business getting in the way of that.
>
> The KGS is a base KGS you can use. Nobody forces you to stick to it.
> In fact for every single deployment of your own you will need to
> extend it. I don't see a problem with the few people using Windows and
> not installing compilers on their platforms to change one version pin.
>

 I think you're missing the point:

 - We shouldn't pin software we don't use. It may be well intentioned, but
if we don't depend on it, we shouldn't take responsibility for it, or give
the perception that we take that responsibility.

 - If we do depend on it, we need to make sure it works on the platforms we
support. QA isn't something you do only when it's easy to do in your local
dev sandbox.

 - If we suddenly no longer support Windows, we better have the guts to come
out and say it, stop producing Windows eggs for Zope 2 stuff and explicitly
state that people cannot and should not use Windows for Zope development. I
hope that's not the case, though. ;)

Martin
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