[Zope3-Users] Eggs and classic instance homes, again... (was Re: Eggs, workingenv.py, and 'classic' instance homes)

[Jeff Shell]

The last time I was active on this list was back in mid-august. I was
fighting an uphill battle to try to figure out how to migrate our
software to 'Eggs'. I ultimately had to abandon the process as there
was just too much real work to be done, and I was getting conflicting
answers about how to move forward. Actually, I couldn't get much help
from the community at all. I apologize for the crankiness of this
email. The last time I tried to get help on this topic was an
excercise in sheer frustration. Since then, the gulf I've worried
about seems to have gotten even bigger, and I'm feeling very stressed
right now.

So now I see all that's going on with Zope 3 and I still don't
understand a thing about how to move forward. We have about twelve
active customers deployed on Zope 3, on top of one or two large
frameworks that we've built on top if Z3. We still use the basic
'instance home' layout. We don't use eggs - we just check things out
directly into the instance home. Even stuff from the Zope community,
because it's easier to do that than to even get workingenv or any of
these other things running.

I'm still lost about what to do. Grok is of no use to us at the
moment. Many of these apps have been up and running for longer than
Grok's been alive. Is there any kind of migration documentation out
there? Or have these new ways of doing things been in use for so long
that most people have just rolled along with them? I just don't have
the time. I scarcely have time to keep up with the lists (which is
obvious since I haven't read a thing for nearly three months).

I'm going to resume my conversation here, responding to myself.

August 16, 2007, Jeff Shell wrote:
> > Jeff Shell wrote:
> > > But now I'd like to be able to install that into "classic" zope 3.3
> > > instance homes, trying to be as unobtrusive as possible.
> >
> > How have you installed other packages before? I suspect by just dumping
> > their source in INSTANCE/lib/python. Any reason not to continue to do that?
>
> Because I feel like we're falling further and further behind, or at
> least trapped in our own little world.

Yep, this is becoming even more true. We're now even further behind.

> But yes, this is how we did it. I ended up writing most of
> rocketbuild/rockout (our Rake-ish tool) because of this. There are a
> lot of external tools out there that we still don't use because we
> don't have the time to deal with the headache (made minor by
> `rockout`, but still present) of dumping sources into lib/python. For
> internal stuff, it's not so bad.

I want to get away from this (using source control as distribution
mechanism). Eggs and buildout are supposed to help here, but
ultimately it was easier to roll our own tool as we just could not
figure out how to apply them to our configurations.

We're about to do a massive server upgrade, which would be a good time
to sneak in new deployment practices.

> The longer we avoid whatever is going on with setuptools and buildout,
> the harder it will be to migrate. It's hard enough already.

Yep. Feels even harder now, but probably because they cause me so much
stress just by looking at them.

> > That seems backward. If you want to install an package into a "classic"
> > environment, it doesn't seem that surprising you'll also have to do it
> > the "classic" way...
>
> It doesn't seem entirely backward. I mean, it does. But at the same
> time... I just don't know how it's all supposed to work. But if we
> keep doing things in the 'classic' way without trying to step forward,
> then I fear we'll stay this way forever because it's already scary
> enough peeking over the hill at how buildout and all of that stuff
> works and how different it is from how we've done things. I don't want
> the gulf to get bigger, because I think that with our plans for growth
> and for a more distributed deployment server setup, 'buildout' will
> help tremendously.
>
> I'm just trying for baby steps right now, because it feels like we've
> still got a long way to go to get to anything better.
>
> I saw mention of 'workingenv' in your book, so I assumed it was or is
> possible to easily have instance homes with locally managed eggs.
> Shouldn't it be?

Still have a long way to go. Still have no answers for what to do or
how to start migrating. Some of our problem is caused by the stupidity
of CVS, which will go away when we migrate to Git.

Is there going to be a Zope 3.4, for real this time? Will it offer the
clues I'm looking for? 'zopeproject' says 'You can start a new
Zope-based web application from scratch with just two commands'. But
what about those of us who have started many many Zope based web
projects?

Thanks,
Jeff Shell