[Distutils] Beta release of zc.buildout 1.5.0

[Tarek Ziadé]

On Fri, Apr 30, 2010 at 4:28 AM, Gary Poster <gary.poster at canonical.com> wrote:
> I have made a beta release of zc.buildout 1.5.0.
>
> Among other changes, this release includes the ability to use zc.buildout with a system Python, if you use the new z3c.recipe.scripts instead of zc.recipe.egg for generating scripts.
>
> Changelog:
>
> http://pypi.python.org/pypi/zc.buildout/1.5.0b1#b1-2010-04-29
>
> In my experience, working with a system ("non-clean") Python can be fragile in many ways.  However, this release addresses the problems I have encountered so far.
>
> Your feedback is welcome.  I hope to make a final release sometime next week.

There's a big problem in our ecosystem:  PyPI + our various installers
don't have the concept of "beta" release. Any new release is
considered to be the latest release.

Until it's fixed, I think we should avoid pushing any betas to PyPI,
especially zc.buildout, because many buildout instances
out there are getting upgraded automatically. Leading to a wave of
problems when there's an issue in the release.

I propose that we "hide" the beta version on PyPI until all problems
are cleared u, so people don't auto-upgrade their buildouts.

Moreover, zc.buildout is very fragile to all the different setups out
there. We have been doing manual tests in the past, but we should
definitely set up some continuous integration tools. We should try, if
anyone has some time, to implement a few functional tests where
buildout would be used in various environments.

- with/without virtualenv),
- a typical plone setup
- etc.

Last but not least, I think this auto-upgrade feature zc.buildout
should be removed.  I'd be in favor of an explicit update of this
software, rather than having zc.buildout auto-upgrading itself like
this.

Having a system broken because a new version was pushed at PyPI is not
something we should end up with. The auto upgrade feature should be
optional (and disabled by default IMHO, or at least asking the
question at the prompt ?).

Regards
Tarek


> Gary
> _______________________________________________
> Distutils-SIG maillist  -  Distutils-SIG at python.org
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/distutils-sig
>



-- 
Tarek Ziadé | http://ziade.org