[Zope3-Users] Re: Using svn checkout with zc packages

[Philipp von Weitershausen]

On 30 Jul 2007, at 17:19 , Stephan Richter wrote:
> On Monday 30 July 2007 09:59, Jeff Shell wrote:
>> Last time I checked, which I admit has been a while, buildout didn't
>> provide any examples of how to transition into buildout style
>> development.
>
> I agree we are totally lacking  At the one end we push hard for  
> people to use
> eggs -- even make the Zope 3 trunk checkout totally useless --

How is it useless? It still works, no?

> and on the other hand we are providing zero documentation on how to  
> get started.

Zero documentation is a bit unfair. zc.buildout has had a README.txt  
and a CheeseShop homepage for a long time (> half a year). There are  
dozens of zc.* and z3c.* packages in svn.zope.org for which the same  
doesn't hold true.

The README.txt may have been spartan in the beginning, but even the  
version in the half-year old 1.0.0b17 release (the oldest one  
available on the CheeseShop) explains how to

* install an egg and an interpreter launcher that has that egg on its  
sys.path

* work with a development egg

Apart from a testrunner, this is usually everything you need to know  
to get started with simple packages. Of course you need to know about  
eggs, but those are well-documented, too (heck, even in my book).

Jim also wrote a tutorial (you link to it below). Admittedly it's not  
very visible. We should change that. You, I and the others who know  
about it already are all equally guilty of not having spoken up and  
promoted it so far.


Baiju M, by the way, has written two blog posts with code examples on  
how to deploy a Zope 3 web application from eggs and how to make life  
easier with zc.buildout [1,2].

[1] http://baijum81.livejournal.com/19795.html
[2] http://baijum81.livejournal.com/20551.html


So, in all fairness, there's stuff out there (apart from the numerous  
packages that are in svn.zope.org and that can serve as good  
examples). Though I agree it needs to be consolidated a bit, brushed  
up and publicized.


> Here are some documents that should get you started (in order I  
> would look at
> them):
>
> - zc.buildout presentation slides:
>     http://svn.zope.org/zc.buildout/trunk/doc/tutorial.txt? 
> rev=76281&view=auto
>
> - z3c.formdemo as an example of a small egg-based application:
>     http://svn.zope.org/z3c.formdemo/trunk/?rev=76281
>
> - PEAK setuptools:
>     http://peak.telecommunity.com/DevCenter/setuptools
>
> I hope this helps!