[Zope3-dev] future of fssync (was: RE: [SpringCleaning07])

[Jim Fulton]

On Jan 2, 2007, at 10:23 AM, Stephan Richter wrote:

> On Wednesday 20 December 2006 16:03, Jeff Shell wrote:
>>>>> zope.fssync
>>>
>>> +1
>>
>> 0
>>
>> It's too bad that this seems to have gone unfinished. The biggest  
>> pain
>> (well, one of the big pains) we experience with Zope 3 is the lack of
>> anything like Zope 2's export/import. Or, going further back,
>> 'manage_exportHack'. :). This is a side topic and I'm not going to
>> elaborate further except to beg for some low to medium level
>> export/import capability. It seems that fssync was one of the
>> alternatives, or could be, if I recall correctly.
>
> The question is why you need it. zope.fssync was originally  
> developed for TTW
> development via the filesystem. I think this use case has gone away.

Certainly TTW development has a much smaller future than once  
envisioned,
but it is still done to some degree.

> What use
> cases do *you* have for using fssync?

I think fssync would be very useful for content management.  I'd love  
to be
able to use fssync to manage a wiki (or other collection of  
documents) offline.

Of course, there is the use case that Jeff mentioned, which is export/ 
import.

I don't think a whole lot is needed to make fssync a reality:

1. Cure any bitrot that has set in.  It would also ne nice to replace  
existing
     tests with modern doctests.

2. Provide a Python API. fssync originally had a Python API, but this  
was
     replaced with a web-based API.  I think there should be both a  
Python
     API that wasn't encumbered in any way by security, and a  
protected web-based
     API.  The Python API should really be Zope and even ZODB  
independent.
     I don't think this would be a lot of work.  The original one  
wasn't and would
     be useful in many cases.

3. I think there should be a secure web-based interface.  This will  
require:

     - Adding security checks that the user is allowed to access  
serialization
       and de-serialization adapters,

     - Adding security declarations for these adapters,

I don't think any of these would require a great deal of work.

Sadly, I won't be able to work on fssync any time soon, but I'd be  
willing to provide
some high-level advice and oversight if someone else was able and  
interested
in working on it.

Jim

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