On Sun, Jan 13, 2013 at 9:49 AM, Jim Fulton <j...@zope.com> wrote: > On Sat, Jan 12, 2013 at 7:11 PM, Philippe Ombredanne > <pombreda...@nexb.com> wrote: >> >> On Mon Dec 17 15:35:47 CET 2012, Anton Koval' psihonavt at gmail.com wrote: >>> in our project we've decided to completely move >>> buildout process to offline mode. >>> according to documentation >>> (http://pypi.python.org/pypi/zc.buildout/2.0.0a5) >>> I made updates in our main buildout configuration file, like: >>> download-cache = ... >>> install-from-cache = true >>> offline = true >>> But when buildout tries to install any part with recipe specified, >>> it is (obviously) failing, e.g.: >>> Error: Couldn't find a distribution for 'iw.recipe.cmd'. >>> So, my question is: are there ways to fetch recipes also from >>> some cache (or whatever) on local disk? >> >> I have experienced the same issue >> See https://github.com/buildout/buildout/issues/41 >> This is a bug and also per Jim Fulton a lack of specification/documentation >> of what offline really means. >> >> IMHO it is not possible today to bootstrap and buildout offline. Anyone with >> a better story there? > > Try: > > install-from-cache = true > > without specifying offline mode. > > install-from-cache was intended to support exactly this use case. > >> >> That said the fixes are rather easy ... And I have an ugly but nicely >> working monkey patching extension that I will publish on pypi in a couple >> days... Which ironically enough needs to be installed with pip before a >> boostrap. >> >> Now Jim suggested I should bring the discussion here. >> >> In general installing packages without a network connection should be >> straight forward, simple and easy. That would be the common understanding of >> what offline means. >> >> It works fine with setuptools/distribute and pip albeit a tad circumvoluted >> and under documented. >> >> It does not with buildout and fails because with the offline flag/config, >> buildout calls its install function with a None dest argument making >> setuptools/distribute fail downstream with a weird exception as you >> reported. >> >> This affects all current and recent versions of buildout. > > Again, I think this works by setting install-from-cache to true. > > The original semantics of offline mode didn't fit it's name. It origibally > meant "don't install anything". That's how it was implemented. The original > goal was both not to download anything and not to **install** anything. > Note that this was added before there was a cache. > > Later, offline mode was extended to avoid network access. In particular > offline mode was changed to disallow extending remote configuration > files. This change, > not made by me, broke some of my companies buildouts. I didn't argue with it > at > the time as the change was consistent with the option name, if not the > original > intent. > > Offline mode is largely a relic of buildout's early evolution. I almost > never use it and, when I do, I use it in a way that depend on it's > current semantics. In particular, I use buildout to create configurations > for installed software. In this context, buildout is running as root and it > is not OK to install new software. > > I believe that install-from-cache (without offline mode) would address > Philippe's use case. (It's used by zc.sourcerelease.) > > That leaves the ambiguous meaning of offline mode. In particular, > buildout 2 potentially provides an opportunity to fix things in a backward- > incompatible way. > > OTOH, I'd like to avoid any major changes in 2.0 at this point > because it really needs to get finished as soon as possible. > > Among the options I see at the present: > > - Do nothing. And just document the somewhat weird semantics > of the name.
I think this is the best option for now. In addition: - Close some holes in the code where offline mode can lead to weird errors - Change some offline-related error messages. - Error in a hopefully helpful way when offline mode and install-from-cache are used together. > - Add a new option: install, such that install=false has the same > meaning as offline=true. > Deprecate the offline option and accompanying command-line option. Jim -- Jim Fulton http://www.linkedin.com/in/jimfulton Jerky is better than bacon! http://zo.pe/Kqm _______________________________________________ Distutils-SIG maillist - Distutils-SIG@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/distutils-sig
