[Web-SIG] [Proposal] "website" and first-level conf

[Jim Fulton]

On Mar 8, 2007, at 4:36 AM, Chris Withers wrote:

> Jim Fulton wrote:
>> Having everything in one folder is great for development.  It  
>> isn't so good for deployment, at least not on Unix.
>
> Can you explain why?

Yes. See my response to Chad.

> I do a lot of unix deployment, and the thought of a buildout that  
> sprays files all over the system, even if they are in standard unix- 
> y location scares me a lot...

That's because you are a developer.  I've worked for the last couple  
of years with our system administrators supporting major applications  
at Zope Corporation.  For a long time, we did things *our* (the  
developers) way and they lived with it because they had no choice.   
As time wore on and I got to experience more of their pain, I  
realized that maybe they had a clue after all and that If I worked  
with them rather than complacently assuming that they didn't know the  
best way to deploy applications, my life would be easier.

(Side note: Over time, our management has wised up and our SAs have a  
lot more power to tell us, the developers, what to do.  Fortunately,  
over the same period, we have come to appreciate their position and  
so this isn't a problem. :)

>> (I can think of lots of reasons why it wouldn't be great on Wndows  
>> either.)
>
> I'm interested to hear these too since all the microsoft apps I  
> know of tend to have a "one folder" model...

Yeah, that's why I don't use Windows. :)  For years, people word  
files ended up in the same directory with the word applications.   If  
I was a windows server administrator, I would want the software to be  
separate from other artifacts. I'd want to be able to update or  
reinstall the software without losing configuration. I'd want  
configuration data to be managed separately.  This, of course, is  
what the windows registry does.  It puts all of the configuration in  
one place that is separate from the software install.  I'd expect  
logs to be managed separately.

>> single directory containing the few needed files directly.  The  
>> only exception to this for me would be to have a subdirectory for  
>> Python modules, if you have instance specific Python modules.
>
> Indeed. Again, I prefer to have all non-standard-library modules  
> and packages in the instance home, so different versions don't  
> interfere with each other. Yes, this pattern is probably most  
> suited to development environment, but being able to svn the whole  
> instance and just check that out on the production servers is  
> something I personally find very poweful.

>> This is what I do in my latest Zope 3 buildout recipes.
>
> Are those recipes available anywhere?

   http://www.python.org/pypi/zc.zope3recipes

Jim

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