On Oct 6, 2007, at 4:56 AM, Martijn Faassen wrote:
I think Zope 3.4 is currently not usable unless you already know
exactly what you're doing with egg dependencies. What you're
supposed to be doing isn't exactly documented anywhere.
I think you are probably right. I think part of the problem is that
we no longer have a clear vision for what Zope 3 is. I don't think
this is entirely bad, as the vision has been evolving to match
reality. I think most of us are settling on the idea of Zope 3 as
"library", but we're still figuring out how to articulate and
implement this vision.
Zope 3 the code isn't animate, but the open source community better
be.
Right. I consider you to be a part of this community. Several of the
major players in the community have been highly engaged in the
discussions over the past several days. I think it's safe to say
that we're trying to make things better.
We actually care about a Grok version as it's the main way to get
people to actually use Zope 3 stuff.
We noticed this while we were going through egg dependencies by
the way, not "using a Zope 3 version".
I don't know what you are trying to say.
Fred expressed he (and "many of us") are happy he doesn't have to
think about a Zope 3 version anymore. The result is, as far as I
can see, that *everybody* has to think about versions. If there'd
been some release of 3.4, we'd be able to use the versions that
release is using, but instead, everybody is making their own
collections of eggs and hoping for the best.
I understand that eggs can evolve at different rates, but having to
determine the base from which to start ourselves wasn't exactly a
pleasant exercise. Since everybody will have to come up with their
own list I imagine others aren't exactly thrilled either.
That's why I like the idea of managed indexes, similar to the package
repositories managed for linux distributions. I'm hopeful that this
approach will bear fruit soon.
...
But if nobody in the Zope 3 community steps up and starts to
clearly point out what people *should* be doing, the situation will
continue to be unworkable. New users will not be able to adopt Zope
3 at all anymore.
Agreed. Of course, before we can point out what people "should" be
doing, we have to figure out what that is. To do that, people have
to remain engaged.
I do care about getting new users to adopt Zope 3 technologies. I
don't see the Zope 3 community think much about new user adoption.
Lots of people care. Of course, most of us also have day jobs. Many
of us are doing the best we can.
The only way the eggified Zope can be used reliably currently is
with a lot of upfront knowledge most people don't have, and a lot
of work to sort through the eggs. There are scripts floating around
to extract a list of versions from a buildout run, which helps
some, but initially the answer I got on #zope3-dev when asking
about such things was "write your own script, it's easy". I thought
open source communities were about sharing solutions for problems,
not just sharing the problems themselves.
Again, we have to have the solutions before we can share them.
Sometimes, we arrive at these solutions through experimentation.
As always, too, we have to understand the different problem sets we
have and the perspectives that gives us. Many of us are building
applications with Zope 3. Others, like you, are building platforms.
Solutions that work for single applications, like nailing versions in
meta egg or buildout configuration don't work so well for platforms,
as I think you've discovered.
I think in order to get new users to adopt the system, besides
clearly documenting quite involved instructions on what they should
be doing, there should be a way to use Zope 3 reliably *without*
having to have all this knowledge and doing all this work.
Agreed.
Anyway, I know you personally are concerned with this issue, and I
realize that buildout has been attempting to grow features that
help here. I appreciate the help.
Thanks. Note that buildout has very much an application focus.
The Grok project is trying to solve these issues. We published a
document that tells users what to do. We now publish lists of eggs
on a HTTP server (one per grok release). We have adjusted
grokproject so that a versions list will be used automatically when
you create a new grok project. We attempt to reach a situation
where users can install and use Grok and build their own
applications without having to spend too much thought on
dependencies. We aim for a situation where the community manages
the list of dependencies, instead of everyone for themselves.
Sounds great. I suspect that the same or similar effort could server
the broader Zope 3 community.
Why did this have to happen within the Grok project? I have the
impression that too much, people in the Zope 3 community think that
as soon as they themselves and the other expert developers know
what to do (assimilated on the mailing list and online), this is
the end of the problem. We don't have a single Zope 3 release
anymore, but we do want people to use our code and report bugs on it.
We were supposed to. I wonder what happened to that.
As far as I can see this *requires* a list of versions somewhere
that is shared between people and that can be communicated about
easily. It requires a *release procedure* around this list of
versions. As I tried to point out before long ago, the Zope 3
project is not somehow so special it doesn't need releases.
I think the Zope 3 project is somewhat special, which it may need
some kind of releases. :) After all, we have releases of individual
eggs. I don't think it makes much sense to release the traditional
Zope 3 application except perhaps as a testing platform. I do think
we need something like what linux distros provide. We need to
establish a better understanding of this.
as we have fixed the problem with Grok. If non-Grok users are
interested in our fixes, please let us know though. We've just
made this massive investment. I'd suggest people to switch to
Grok anyway, as we actually think about this stuff and care about
having our house in order.
Are you suggesting that other people aren't thinking about this
and don't care?
Fred doesn't appear to care to think about this much, certainly,
and is liking it that way.
So based on a snarky comment by one person, you tar the entire
community. I'll note, BYW, that if you had provided more details, as
Philipp eventually did, I think Fred's response would have been more
sympathetic. (Just guessing)
I hope that the proposal for setting up a known-good-set index
will be helpful. I'm sure Stephan would like to know the versions
you chose. I imagine he'll be able to get those by looking at Grok.
After 3 days of hard work by 2 people, we're still not done with
the Grok eggs. We get weird effects like final releases of packages
*suddenly* needing an entirely new package, between the beta and
the final. I'm quite bothered by this.
Me too.
We still have quite a few dev-r515135 style eggs in the mix as well.
That's bad.
A single known-good index, by the way, doesn't solve all problems.
It will evolve forward as people release newer known-good versions
of eggs. This means that nobody can really rely on such an index,
as suddenly they might be starting to use 3.6 eggs where they were
using 3.5 eggs. Even bugfix releases are currently hardly safe:
using 3.4.1 for some Zope 3 package might mean that suddenly it
requires an entirely new package altogether, introducing new
deprecation warnings and so on (as in this thread).
This is all a matter of the rules for maintaining the index and the
care put into it. If it is well run, a big if, then it should be as
reliable as, say, a linux package repository. This doesn't guarantee
that there won't be problems.
With our Grok versions list, we publish a list *per* version of
Grok. I hope this is the intent for the known-good index as well.
If someone says they use Grok 0.11,
Is Grok 0.11 a feature release? Would you expect the version list
for Grok .11 to change as bug fixes are made?
we want to know *exactly* which versions they are using without
requiring them to send us a long list too. One version number
should be enough. Our installation tools support this, and our
documentation documents this. I think this is the only maintainable
way to actually have a community developing and using a common code
base.
My suggestion is that there should be stable indexes for each
"feature release". Changes to these indexes should be made to fix
bugs, not add new features. Of course, there could be other less
stable indexes for people who want them. If you want to nail all of
the versions for a specific release of grok, then it seems to me that
versions in a meta egg or a buildout configuration should work well.
Jim
--
Jim Fulton
Zope Corporation
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