[Zope3-dev] December release post-mortem

[Jim Fulton]

Sidnei da Silva wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 18, 2006 at 07:36:35AM -0500, Jim Fulton wrote:
> | And then there are the Windows releases.  Making Zope 2 windows releases
> | is very painful and there don't seem to be many people willing to help.
> | We've avoided the pain for Zope 3 by being less ambitious.  We let distutils
> | do most of the work.  The result is that making a windows release takes 
> | minutes
> | and is highly automated, but the experience for the end user is less than
> | ideal,  Many would rightfully argue that it is inadequate.  What we need
> | is a release process that is as easy as the Zope 3 windows release process
> | and produces a result as usable as the Zope 2 windows release.  I'm not sure
> | exactly what the answer is, but I am sure we need to take a fresh approach.
> | Whatever approach we take needs to be highly automated and must not require
> | a lot of specialized Windows expertise.
> 
> The installers do not require much Windows expertise. In fact, they
> require a lot of 'makefile' expertise right now, and some Inno Setup
> expertise, not much else.

Sorry, Inno Setup is a windows installation builder.  I consider this
windows expertise.

> At Enfold Systems we are using our own home-grown python-based process
> to cobble together all the dependencies for building installers. We
> haven't switched to Zope 2.9 though.

I consider switching build languages from make to Python a definate
step forward.

> When the time comes around for a switch, our goal is to switch from
> Inno Setup to Wix [1], at which point we hope to contribute this work
> to Zope. That might take another 6 months though and sure we don't
> want to hold back the Zope Windows installers that long.

Unless the process is automated enough that *I* can do it,
whoever suggests a new system needs to be prepared to
operate it reliably as well.

Jim

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