[Web-SIG] more comments on Paste Deploy

[Jeff Shell]

On 3/7/07, Robert Brewer <fumanchu at amor.org> wrote:
> Jeff Shell wrote:
> > Configuration and deployment?
> >
> > I'm trying to understand the scope of these terms (or this combined
> > term) better. I take it 'configuration' means just how an 'app' might
> > publish itself to a WSGI server. Is that right?
> >
> > For us, deployment now is:
> >
> > 1. Make a Zope 3 instance home ('appserv1')
> > 2. `cd appserv1/lib/python; cvs checkout customerapp`
> > 3. `rockout -vv customerapp/Rockfile install` (installs
> > dependencies, mostly
> >    by CVS / Subversion checkout, usually directly into
> > `appserv1/lib/python`)
> > 4. `cd ../../etc` (back to 'appserv1/etc')
> > 5. choose a port number in zope.conf (the zope/twisted server config)
> > 6. add two lines to Zope 3's `site.zcml` to set up our app
> > 7. add site info to apache (rewriterule(s) /  proxy).
> >
> > Is this analogous to the deployment and configuration being discussed?
>
> Yes, although I want to make sure we keep discussion of 'site
> installation' very separate from 'website composition' (where you
> already have all the pieces and just need to declare where they are and
> how they map to URL's). IMO site installation is a 3 to 5-year project;
> website composition is a one-year project that shouldn't get bogged down
> in the former.

Could you elaborate more on these terms? To whom do the spans 'one
year project' and '3 to 5 year project' apply?

Often we have web apps, written in Zope 3, that are really two or more
web apps. Like an 'admin' side and 'public' side, typically handled
via different skins/views. Apache rewrite rules basically handle that
routing. So in my mind, if I deploy our CMS, I have the following URL
maps:

http://example.com/admin/(.*) => examplesite/++skin++CMSAdmin/$1
http://example.com/(.*) => examplesite/++skin++ExamplePublic/$1

Same Zope application, with just a couple of different settings based
on the incoming URL, and then Zope and our app handles the rest of the
URL.

Is that a site installation? Two site installations? Or two examples
of website composition? Again, I'm just trying to understand the
terminology and map it to the way I'm used to working, and I think of
the above as 'site installation'.

The other tried and true example I can think of is when a customer
asks "uhm, and can we have a forum with that?" I guess website
composition might include the above two URL maps, plus one for:

http://example.com/forum/(.*) => SuperTerrificPylonsWebForumWSGI

But should this be the provence of WSGI? With Apache rewrite rules, if
I was doing such a blunt grafting of 'forum' onto my customer's site,
I could just as easily use phpBB. Then I'm not limiting myself to
Python if I feel there's a better suited tool for a particular task.

I brought up this forum example because it's something we've run into
a couple of times and may be about to encounter again. Depending on
customer needs and wants, one of our thoughts is to just drop in some
PHP bulletin board or some other feature complete app.

So if SuperTerrificPylonsWebForumWSGI is basically a black box - I
configure its colors, templates, etc, but expect no other integration
with the customer's main site / CMS - what benefits might I get from
composing via WSGI?

-- 
Jeff Shell