[Distutils] [zc.buildout] running in safe mode

[Jim Fulton]

On Oct 1, 2008, at 6:34 AM, Tarek Ziadé wrote:

> Hello
>
> I know it is a bad practice for a recipe to return some paths that
> contains important data in the install() method,
> because zc.buildout might remove them.
>
> Nevertheless, it happens from time to time that a developer lose some
> content because of a misconfiguration,
> or a zealous recipe. That is his responsability, and backups are  
> done for that.

I don't think backups are the right approach.  It's a mistake to have  
recipes manage precious data.  If you really really really think  
that's a good idea, then the recipe should at least manage uninstall  
and move precious data aside, rather than remove it.

I don't think it is really the user's problem is a recipe misbehaves  
by allowing precious data to be removed.


> But I think we can improve zc.buildout a bit for that:
>
> what about introducing a safe-mode where the developer get prompted
> everytime zc.buildout.rmtree is about to call
> shutil.rmtree ?
>
> The option could be set in [buildout] like this:
>
> [buildout]
> ...
> safe-mode = true
> ...
>
> and challenge the user when a tree is about to be delete. (it might be
> overkill for single files,
> and they are most of the time unimportant configuration files)
>
> This is a small change, and it would avoid running a backup everytime
> the .cfg are changed. because
> it happens all day long when you are developing.


I suspect this would be so annoying to use that no one would use it.   
I think it's probably easier to fix the broken recipes.  I also think  
calling this "safe" mode is misleading. I  could live with an option  
named something like "prompt-before-removing-files-or-directories".

A better option might be something like "move-aside-on-uninstall",  
which would move files or directories aside rather than deleting them.

I still think it would be better to just fix the broken recipes.

Jim

--
Jim Fulton
Zope Corporation