[Zope] Request regarding 'Hotfixes'

Bill Anderson bill@immosys.com
24 Aug 2001 08:39:06 -0600


(forgot to send to list last night ... ooops)

On Thu, 2001-08-23 at 13:55, marc lindahl wrote:
> 
> 
> > From: Bill Anderson <anderson@hp.com>
> > 
> > It is very important for the distinctin to be made. Consider the new
> > reporter, who has seen ZC/DC issue security fixes, labelling them
> > Hotfixes. Now imagine what happens when they see a list of fifteen,
> > twenty, thirty 'hotfixes', what are they going to assume?
> 
> OK, so what do we call them?  Monkey patches? ;)
> To my mind, a "Product" adds functionality to Zope, it doesn't change
some
> core behavior (thought there are products out there that do, like
ZDebug).
> So I suggest we need a way to distinguish these types of
hotfix-methodology
> based products.  Or a subclass of Product... I can't think of a good
name.
> Patch would again imply fixing something...

How about "Hold-on-this-could-break-things-Mods" ? :^)

But seriously, patch is not synonymous with fixing things, there are
many, many things out there with patches that change things. Patch is
synonymous with changing the behaviour, which *is* what these do. They
modify in place, behaviour of products or zope Core. IMO, it should be
clear that is what these do.

On the naming front ... How about (from the top of my head ... with a
mirror, and in no particular order):

HotPatch -- It combines the feature of non-rebuilding (Hot) with the
fact that it is essentailly a patch to someting (Patch).

CoreMod -- For things that alter the core Zope code. 

or, thinking at the keyboard ...

CorePatchHot
ProductPatchHot

of course, along with this could be the terminology of Cold for patches
applied to the source ... which of course brings us to ...

CorePatchHot
CorePatchCold
CorePatch in the tracker
Nine days old.


Sorry ... no, I am not. ;^)

Then, we could have a contrib structure something like:

HotFixes -- ZC CoreHotPatches, so far, it seems these have been reserved
to security patches, not a bad strategy.

CorePatchHot -- For third party hot patches to Zope Core.

CorePatchCold -- Probably a diff file, to Zope Core material, provided
by third party

ProductPatchHot -- used for example, if someone finds a way of applying
a Hot Patch to a product to alter it's behaviour. here, the author of
the Patch woudl, of course, need to make sure they are following the
licensing of the original product.

ProductPatchCold -- You are probably getting the idea but ... Same as a
productpatch, but would be applied to the actual code of the product.

..nine days old ...

It just occurred to me that these names are also Wikinames :)

Product -- The current definition of a Zope Product, of course. Though I
think some work can be done here as well.

Component -- See the Component definition on zope.org. note, that IMO,
some current products may well be components under the 'new terms'. (I
recall seeing something like this on zope.org, but do not recall thr
specifics atm.)

Service -- A bit vague, but I see Zope as becoming something that
services could be deployed on. The first thing comes to mind for many
are probably Web Services. While these may well be classified under here
(a bit early to tell, really), I get a gut feeling of this being
something more. Perhaps (again, 'typing out loud here'), these could be
for things such as Xron, where a separate thread is fired up, and the
Zope server communicates through it, it providing some 'service' to the
server.


Anyway, I could probably add these to an existing project/proposal if
appropriate, or perhaps we could start a new one, along the lines of
zope Naming Conventions?


Hehe, Zope Standard Base came to mind, but does not seem apropos. ;^)

Anyway, food just arrived, and it has been a long day. :)

Bill Anderson