I'm giving a pair of mini tutorials at PyCon as a single tutorial: http://us.pycon.org/TX2007/TutorialsAM#AM7 One of these is on zc.buildout. This will be a good opportunity to learn about zc.buildout. It will also be a good opportunity to get an introduction to creating eggs. I've included the outline for the buildout mini tutorial below. You can sign up for the tutorial when you register for PyCon: http://us.pycon.org/TX2007/Registration The other mini tutorial is on the Zope Component Architecture. It is aimed a Python programmers in general. You needed be or intend to be a Zope developer to benefit from it. Jim Introduction to zc.buildout - Why zc.buildout? - System assembly - why not make or scons? - Python application assembly with eggs - Support for developers - Assembling applications versus installing packages - Why not easy_install? - A Python Egg Primer Here I'll provide an introduction to using eggs from the point of view of a the lazy programmer. I'll omit setuptools arcana and focus on the core concepts that make eggs so useful. - Eggs They can sound complicated, but they are actually pretty simple. - easy_install and setuptools - Some egg-related jargon - distributions - source and binary distributions - eggs and develop eggs - requirements - index- and link-servers - entry points and script generation - Quick buildout introduction - A buildout.cfg file - Parts - Recipes - Special recipes for supporting Python application development - Buildout examples - Using buildout to try out new packages - Using buildout to create a development environment - Installing egg-based scripts for personal use - System assembly - A lazy programmer's introduction to creating eggs - Develop eggs, a minimal starting point - Adding data needed for distribution - Creating distribution files - Extending buildout with new recipes - The recipe API - A sample recipe - Part dependencies - Advanced topics - Sharing an egg repository across projects - Offline mode - Multiple deployment environments (dev/stage/prod) and multiple machines. - Using buildout with system-packaging tools (e.g. RPM). -- Jim Fulton mailto:jim@zope.com Python Powered! CTO (540) 361-1714 http://www.python.org Zope Corporation http://www.zope.com http://www.zope.org