[Zope-Annce] Local File System v1.0 released

jfarr jfarr@speakeasy.org
Thu, 22 Aug 2002 12:58:37 -0700


Finally, the long awaited next release of the LocalFS product!

I've updated it to be a modern Zope product, but the essential guts are still
the same rock-solid code that's been in the wild for 3-4 years now. There may
still be a couple of new minor bugs, especially doc bugs in the help screens
or admin pages. I appreciate any and all feedback, which is now even easier to
give, since...

LocalFS is now being managed on SourceForge. The LocalFS project page is at:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/localfs/

>From here you can download releases, submit bugs or feature requests, or join
one of the support forums.

Here's what's new (from the change log):

- Fixed regex deprecation warning.

- Fixed possible IOError on module loadup trying to log exceptions.

- Fixed acquisition problems with LocalFile and LocalDirectory
  objects. DTML rendered from the file system should now work just
  like DTML in the object database.

- Fixed a permissions bug with the manage_upload() method. It was
  looking for the wrong permission. =(

- Updated management pages to new Zope look and feel.

- Removed redundant edit page and manage_edit() method. All properties
  are now edited through the properties page.

- Added help system documentation.

- Removed automatic text mode translation. All files are now copied
  as binary (with a nice little performance boost!)

- Removed old, crusty win32wnet.pyd.

- Changed manage_upload() to use a new strategy for determining the
  object id from the file path. First we check for Unix path seperators.
  If we find one we grab everything after the last one as the filename.
  Next we check for Windows and then Mac path separators and hope we
  never get a Unix path without a Unix path seperator but with one of
  these characters ('\' or ':'). Finally, if we never see any kind of
  path separator we just assume there is no path and use the whole
  thing as the filename. I think this should work for most browsers. :-/

- Changed object creation protocol. External adapters now receive an
  open file object instead of a blob of text.

- Added get_size() and bobobase_modification_time() methods to
  LocalFile objects.

- Added new manage_createDirectory() method to LocalDirectory objects
  (uses the 'Manage local files' permission).

Big, huge thanks to all the people who have contributed ideas, code, and
feature requests over the years. Hopefully it will all pay off when you
download the new version!

-----------

Also:

Right now, I'm putting the wraps on LocalFS v1.1, which is a massive
improvement over the current version. Just to give you a sneak preview of the
changes:

- Handles all major object types out of the box: Image, File, DTML Document /
Method, Zope Page Template, Script (Python), ExternalMethod, ZSQL Method, even
Database Connections!

- Copy and paste from the object database to the file system and vice versa.

- Local directories are now represented as Folder objects, so they should
behave just like a normal ZODB Folder.

- Because of this, object 'data' (e.g., the actual content bits in an image
file) is fetched in a lazy manner. This means that the data is not loaded
until the object is rendered, but all other object properties are available at
all times.

Remember, this is just a teaser! These features are not in version 1.0! Sorry,
you'll just have to wait another week or two. =)

Cheers,
--jfarr