[Distutils] Beta release of zc.buildout 1.5.0

[Jim Fulton]

On Fri, Apr 30, 2010 at 4:38 PM, Tarek Ziadé <ziade.tarek at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 30, 2010 at 4:28 AM, Gary Poster <gary.poster at canonical.com> wrote:
>> I have made a beta release of zc.buildout 1.5.0.
>>
>> Among other changes, this release includes the ability to use zc.buildout with a system Python, if you use the new z3c.recipe.scripts instead of zc.recipe.egg for generating scripts.
>>
>> Changelog:
>>
>> http://pypi.python.org/pypi/zc.buildout/1.5.0b1#b1-2010-04-29
>>
>> In my experience, working with a system ("non-clean") Python can be fragile in many ways.  However, this release addresses the problems I have encountered so far.
>>
>> Your feedback is welcome.  I hope to make a final release sometime next week.
>
> There's a big problem in our ecosystem:  PyPI + our various installers
> don't have the concept of "beta" release. Any new release is
> considered to be the latest release.

buildout does. :)

buildout has a prefer-final option.

Including:

  [buildout]
  prefer-final = true

Will cause buildout to only use final release unless there are
no final releases that satisfy a requirement.

Using this option will cause buildout to automatically downgrade
itself if it previously upgraded to a non-final release. In buildout 2,
prefer-final true will be the default.

> Until it's fixed, I think we should avoid pushing any betas to PyPI,
> especially zc.buildout, because many buildout instances
> out there are getting upgraded automatically. Leading to a wave of
> problems when there's an issue in the release.
>
> I propose that we "hide" the beta version on PyPI until all problems
> are cleared u, so people don't auto-upgrade their buildouts.

Hidden releases still show up in the simple index.

> Moreover, zc.buildout is very fragile to all the different setups out
> there. We have been doing manual tests in the past, but we should
> definitely set up some continuous integration tools. We should try, if
> anyone has some time, to implement a few functional tests where
> buildout would be used in various environments.
>
> - with/without virtualenv),
> - a typical plone setup
> - etc.
>
> Last but not least, I think this auto-upgrade feature zc.buildout
> should be removed.  I'd be in favor of an explicit update of this
> software, rather than having zc.buildout auto-upgrading itself like
> this.

I find auto update to be useful, but I wouldn't object to a manual
command:

  bin/buildout upgrade

It would be easier to implement than what we have now.

Jim

-- 
Jim Fulton