[Chicago] help from Django and Pylons developers

[Ian Bicking]

Massimo Di Pierro wrote:
> What I mean by zero configuration is not that you do not need to 
> configure it. What I mean is that there is no configuration you can 
> tweak. There is no framework level parameter that you can change and 
> make your applications not portable.

Now this seems to be getting a bit confused.  There can be two types of 
configuration: configuring your application for the deployment 
environment, and configuration the framework for your application.  An 
example of the first would be a database configuration parameter (which 
web2py embeds in the source, which frankly gives it a scrappy PHP feel 
with regard to configuration).  An example of the second kind of 
configuration would be stuff like indicating a default charset or 
template engine.

TG 1 mixed these two.  Pylons very carefully does not mix these two (the 
second kind of configuration goes in config/middleware.py and 
config/environment.py, and for typical applications those don't need to 
be edited).  TG 2 as a result doesn't mix these two.  I've seen 
criticisms of Django that it does mix these two, though I don't know 
much about the details.

I think it's a good point of comparison, but it requires considerable 
explanation.

-- 
Ian Bicking : ianb at colorstudy.com : http://blog.ianbicking.org