[Zope] What do we want in the way of Zope binary distributions?

[Chris McDonough]

On Thu, 2003-04-17 at 06:46, Oliver Bleutgen wrote:
> Just some random thoughts from someone who doesn't use the binaries 
> anyway, but helped people who do:
> 
> LFS support on linux would be nice (if not obligatory when using Data.fs).

The Python 2.2.2 that "ships" with RH 7.3+ is indeed LFS enabled.

> How are you going to cope with the fact that the stock python from the 
> distribution maker might not be the "recommended/supported" version for 
> the zope? I guess nobody can guarantee that even for the next two 
> version of RH linux.

We lucked out a bit here because Red Hat uses Python for a lot of their
tools.  So we're almost guaranteed that Python 2.2.2 (the target version
for Zope 2.7) will be installed on any recent Red Hat system.  I think
it's pretty safe to assume that Python 2.3+ will also be available in
RPM format, so if we come to depend on later Python versions, we can
just depend on the RPM of that version.

I had a problem with Red Hat's Python 2.2.0 distro because they failed
to include the compiler package along with the release, but this has
been fixed in their 2.2.2 package.

> So, are you going to include a python with the zope RPM?

No.  The RPM will just depend on (require) the proper version of the
system Python.

I have a spec file stubbed out at
http://cvs.zope.org/Zope/inst/Attic/Zope.spec.in?rev=1.1.2.8&only_with_tag=chrism-install-branch&content-type=text/vnd.viewcvs-markup

It needs to change, as it was written before lots of the rest of the
installer changes.  It was also written before 2.2.2 was available from
Red Hat in an RPM format, but AFAIK, the latest Python that Red Hat now
ships is 2.2.2, with the package name python2-2.2.2-11.7.3.

> While I'm no rpm expert, I know there are the options --relocate and 
> --prefix, which allow to modify where the package is installed. The 
> package must somehow support this.

It would be nice to have, but IMHO most people who would install from an
RPM wouldn't know how to relocate the package anyway, don't you think?  I
I think the idea is to give folks who aren't comfortable with source
releases an easy way to get going, but I'm not sure how many people
would use RPM to do version control like this.  Additionally, many
instance homes can share a single software home and instance homes can
be installed anywhere.  The installation of an instance home will
however not be managed via RPM.

> So, an optimal installation package would IMO consist of two 
> rellocatable rpms, python (if needed because the distribution doesn't 
> have the right one) and zope.

Since we will only target recent Red Hat releases, we know that it has a
suitable Python RPM, and we will depend on it.  Other folks can use the
source distro or package up their own RPMs of Zope and/or Python for
their favorite RPM-based distro.

Does all of this make sense?

- C