[Zope] Re: [Zope-dev] Separate staging and development areas for a product

[Oliver Bleutgen]

John Schinnerer wrote:
> Aloha,
> 
> <snip>...
> 
>>... but I really need my development
>>version accessible to the internet, too.  And it would be nice to
>>have three versions so I could have a separate testing version 
>>public, as well.
>>
> 
>>What should someone like me do in order to develop a product that is
>>also in use on my server?  What do other independent developers do?
>>
> 
> Zope 'version' objects (Ch. 3, zope book, near the end) supposedly
> address some of your issues (which are similar to some of mine - I too
> would like to have fully functional preview/test sites available on my
> live server).  I haven't tried versions yet, though, because...
> 
> What the zope book info on versions doesn't say (and I haven't found
> elsewhere either) is how (or if it's even possible) to access a version
>>from outside the management interface - that is, as a client would see
> it in their browser, so it can be tested before changes are committed
> to the 'public' version.  If I can't do that, and do it transparently,
> versions don't do me any good.  There'd have to be some URL trickery
> somewhere to serve up a version without breaking buckets 'o links...

When you enter a version, you just get a cookie named 'Zope-Version'
with the path to your version as a value. You can see it for yourself if 
you configure the browser to ask before accepting cookies and look at 
the cookie details.
In Zope 2.3.3, and I suspect in any zope after that also, it's possible 
to just set this cookie, and the browser is in that version. Therefore 
the permission 'join/leave versions' is quite useless IMO.
The upside is that you need just a short code snippet (setting that 
cookie) to let anyone (including anonymous) enter any version.
Downsides are obvious and manyfold.


cheers,
oliver