[Zope3-Users] need guidance

[Duncan McGreggor]

On Nov 29, 2005, at 8:07 PM, Brad Allen wrote:

>>> Here is another question. Suppose I'm working with a team of 
>>> developers. Should we each set up our own separate Zope3 instance, 
>>> and do SVN checkouts into our own separate, local /lib/python 
>>> directories inside the instance? How then would we merge any changes 
>>> done in the ZODB? On the other hand, having all team members try to 
>>> share a single Zope 3 instance seems unworkable...
>>
>> I wrote a short treatise on this subject at 
>> http://www.plope.com/Members/chrism/zope_collab/view that you may 
>> want to take a look at.
>> It's written with Zope 2 in mind but the issues and mechanics remain 
>> the same.
>
> Ok, so this kind of discussion makes me wonder how much I can do 
> without ZODB, or at least whether I can just use the ZODB files like 
> any other binary files in the SVN repository. Having to write scripts 
> to regenerate them sounds like a lot of ass-ache. Is there any reason 
> why I can't just check in those data.fs files into SVN along with my 
> Python packages, so that other team members can check them out into 
> their respective Zope instances?

It sounds like a pain, and to be honest, at first it is a bit arduous. 
Not only does it get faster and become second nature, but chunks of it 
can be generalized and reused. It really doesn't take that long to get 
accustomed to it. And once you start doing it regularly, you gain a 
tremendous amount. Not just in the mere knowledge acquired, either... 
there's a subtle shift in your programming where you give extra 
attention to the data-generating/-populating code, which in turn makes 
you architect your information better ahd brings higher overall levels 
of organization to your project.

Additionally, the ability to generate a new instance of a project 
complete with a fresh-and-ready ZODB is of immense value when working 
on a project with multiple developers or teams of developers. Several 
times, we have saved literally days of work taking advantage of this. 
I'm sure others that take even better advantage of this have saved 
perhaps weeks.

I give it two thumbs up ;-)

d