[Zope] Question about debugging errors indicated by compilezpy.py

[Douglas Wade Needham]

Greetings,

I don't know if this is the proper list for this question, but given
the other questions I have seen on the list while looking through the
archives, I am hoping it is.  I have a question regarding
compilezpy.py, but before I ask it, I want to give a quick background
so that you may know where I am coming from.

Around a year ago, I wanted to put up several web sites for the
various sides of my family, as well as for a gaming clan which I
head.  These web sites were to have areas which required varying
levels of privilege to access, and while I have written such
using CGI and C, I did not want to do so again if I could help it.
Since I had just been laid off by Lucent, I had some time on my
hands, and so I investigated things like phpNuke, postNuke and other
packages.  However, I was severely disappointed with them, and
ultimately investigated Zope, and found it was far superior to them,
and could do what I wanted it to do.  Unfortunately, with that superior
it also comes with some complexity, and hence, a bit of a learning
curve, even for someone having 20+ years of programming and nearly as
many years of TCP/IP experience.  So I started doing lots of reading,
and started re-learning Python, which I had evaluated while working at
CompuServe around a decade ago.  During this time, I was using the
versions from the pkgsrc collection used by NetBSD (and to a lesser
degree, other OSes).  But they were woefully out-of-date.  And so I
started a project to update the package versions.

Over the past few months, I have been using updated versions of
packages for Zope, Plone, and some other modules.  I have encountered
a few issues along the way, such as problems with some page templates
in Plone 2.0.3.  But I found I could work around them, and too the
time to address other areas where I needed to learn more.  And I am at
a point where I have just finished re-updating these packages from
2.7.2 to 2.7.3, and from 2.0.3 to 2.0.5, in preparation for my builds
of the NetBSD 2.0 release which is nearing completion.  I am happy to
say that most of the issues have been cleared up, but one remains.
Now for the details.

I am doing this work on both NetBSD 1.6.2 and 2.0, using Python 2.3.3
on the former, and 2.3.4 on the latter, with both versions compiled
with pthread support.  As noted, I am using Zope 2.7.3, as it is the
current stable release.  Being an experienced programmer, I like to
make sure things are clean, particularly both when installing and
uninstalling.  As a result, I need to make sure that all .py files
which will ever be compiled in a normal installation will be compiled
during the building of the package, so that the package will cleanly
remove later.  To achieve this, I am using compilezpy.py to compile
each python module when it is installed.  However, I continue to have
a problem with a few modules, such as Archetypes (currently 1.2.5rc5)
and PloneCollectorNG (currently 1.2.6).  When compiling the module, I
get a message from compilezpy.py stating "There were errors during
Python module compilation."  Having played around with some python
files, I have suspicions that I know what the errors are (depricated
features being used), and nothing seems to be broken at the moment,
but it still leaves me with this question:

    How can I find out what the errors were which caused this message,
    and where did they occur?

It almost seems to me that somehow, there should be a way to get more
verbose output, or that the errors would be stored in a log file
someplace (say in /tmp).  However, I have not yet been able to find
either.  Anyone know a way to do these, so that I do not have to
compile each and every file manually to find the one(s) causing this
message?

Thanks!

BTW...Interested in learning more about pkgsrc or my packaged versions
of Zope and the various products I have packaged for them?  Just drop
me a note, and I will reply with the info.

- Doug

-- 
Douglas Wade Needham - KA8ZRT        UN*X Consultant & UW/BSD kernel programmer
Email:  cinnion @ ka8zrt . com       http://cinnion.ka8zrt.com
Disclaimer: My opinions are my own.  Since I don't want them, why
            should my employer, or anybody else for that matter!