[Zope-dev] Pluggins vs Application Definition

[Chris Withers]

[aside... hmmm, crossposting, maybe time to merge zope-dev and 
zope3-dev? most stuff seems to be relevent to both nowadays]

Jim Fulton wrote:
> 
> In Zope 3, we went with a more explicit installation mechanism,
> in which people had to explicitly cause a package's ZCML files to be
> loaded for it to be used.  We added a mechanism to make this easier,
> by simply dropping a file into a special directory, package-includes,
> so an installer wouldn't have to fool with pointy brackets.

Personally, I hate package-includes. It creates a load of mess in a 
folder that is likely to need to have new tools written to look after it 
in the future :-/

I'd really like to just see lines getting includes in site.zcml.

There is precedent for this, very good precedent in fact.
Think of httpd.conf, and the module include lines at the top.
I'm all for supporting having squillions of files all over the place, 
but I'd really like to see the default be one file, as with Apache.

Also, I wish there was some way to have a .zcml that is in the 
_software_ home, not the package home, that inlcuded all the "standard" 
bits so that when I upgrade my zope version, I don't have to worry about 
juggling all those files and wondering which ones are out of date and 
which ones have "new" versions...

> - If the application is extensible, then application users
>   will want to be able to extend the application by adding
>   "pluggins".  

This also applies particularly to framework applications like CMF...

> If application users are not technically
>   sophisticated, or, more importantly, not technically interested,
>   they peobably would prefer to just drop something into a special
>   directory and be done with it.

Yup, /products, /plugins, etc, everything from Photoshop to Zope 2 has 
this concept ;-)

cheers,

Chris

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