[Zope] external methods and pyc files

[Richard Jolly]

Paul Winkler wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 04, 2004 at 12:20:17PM +0000, Richard Jolly wrote:
> 
>>Hi,
>>
>>I'm new to Zope, and I've inherited a project with a bug that I've been 
>>unable to solve for a couple of days. Please excuse any wrong-terminology.
>>
>>There is a zope installation, with two containers under the root folder. 
>>In each of these there is an external method having the same name, 
>>'search'. On the public side of the site its clear that, on occaision, 
>>the wrong one of these external methods is called.
>>
>>Root
>>  A
>>    methx_search
>>  B
>>    methx_search
>>
>>The methx's contain sql statements pointing to different databases, and 
>>the error messages I get are sql errors ( 'no column ...' ), which is 
>>why its pretty clear which one is being called.
>>
>>I couldn't find any obvious reason why the wrong one was being called, 
>>but I found I could disambiguate the external methods by renaming them 
>>A_methx_search and B_methx_search in the ZMI, and saving the methods to 
>>reload them. This worked, albeit proving I don't understand the root of 
>>the problem, however...
> 
> 
> It's almost certainly incorrect use of acquisition.
> Can't say for sure without seeing how exactly you call these methods.
> That's the problem with acquisition - it's easy to set up
> something that *usually* works... 
> I would stick with your solution of using distinct names.

It turns out that renaming, via the ZMI, the external methods is not 
sufficient. They still get confused. Presumably if I rename the methods 
is the py files this would finally eliminate the problem.

>>The customer installation of this only includes the .pyc files that 
>>contain the external methods. When I try to rename and reload with the 
>>.pyc files only in the Extensions folder the problem does not get 
>>solved. When I remove the .pyc files and put the original .py files in 
>>place, everything works fine. What is going on?
> 
>
> ermm... no idea. 

I've found a reference to an old zope bug that sounds similar to my 
problem that was rejected:

http://zope.org/Collectors/Zope/29

however the rejection doesn't throw any light on the py/pyc issue.

> by the way, .pyc files don't protect your code very well,
> if that's why you're shipping only them.

I know - again, I plead "inherited project, not my fault".

What I'd really like is to find a fix through the ZMI, because then I 
don't have to redistribute anything to the customer, and they don't have 
to reinstall, etc.

Thanks for you help, I'll go back to reading about aquisition.

Richard