Zope2.12 tarball

[Jonas Meurer]

Hey Michael,

First, great to see you still working on that issue. Unfortunately i'm
far to busy to do any major work regarding zope2.12 packaging.

On 18/10/2010 Michael Mulich wrote:
> I've got a few questions hopefully someone can answer. But first,
> let me inform you about what I've been doing to package Zope 2.12
> and any subsequent minor versions.
> 
> Summary of this message: I have created a Zope2 tarball for us to
> use in packaging and I could use your help.

great. Could you elaborate on what this tarball contains? I guess all
zope 2.12 dependencies plus some buildout magic you wrote to build
zope2.12 from this tarball without internet connection?

> I started work on a zope2.12 branch a couple of weeks ago called
> buildout-built.[0] This branch has been successful in packaging
> Zope2 and its dependencies. However, this implementation has one
> major flaw. That flaw is that the source can't be patched before the
> build, which is important when making the zope-common customization
> for dzhandle support. Also, patching the source before the build is
> critical for security fixes. So the branch is dead, but it
> illuminated a better more generic solution.

indeed, the ability to patch sources before build is important. why is
it impossible with that branch?

> Upon thinking about the issue a bit more and having communication
> with others about packaging Zope2 on systems other than Debian, I
> decided to resurrect the Zope2 tarball. The tarball is generic
> enough that it should work across all Unix platforms. I'll be
> hosting the tarballs out of weblion.psu.edu.[1] The source for the
> tarball can also be found in the WebLion subversion repository.[2]
> The tarball for Zope 2.12.10 is complete and can be found up on the
> WebLion web server.[3] Also, this is a maintainable solution, see
> the docs online or in the tarball for more info.[4]
> 
> I've started work on another branch, named with-revived-tarball,
> which hopefully we can get working with this new tarball.[5] So far,
> I've touched nothing more than the watch, changelog and control
> files.
> 
> My main question at this point is... How do I get the rules file to
> work with the tarball?

the rules file is a Makefile. It's the Makefile which is used to
configure, compile, build and install the software. In simple cases, all
it does is invoking configure, make, make install.

> Can I get a hand putting this together? The hard part is done. We
> just need to take the tarball and put it in the package.

I just gave this tarball a quick try. First thing I recognized was that
compilation failed as it tries to write at a place outside the build
dir:

localhost - - [19/Oct/2010 23:12:27] "GET /docutils/ HTTP/1.1" 200 128
Getting distribution for 'docutils'.
install_dir /home/jonas/debian/zope/zope2.12/branches/build-area/zope2.12-2.12.10.obsolete.0.0208947901419414/build/eggs/tmp87e50d
error: /usr/lib/pymodules/python2.6/numpy/egg-dist-tmp-5fAqrj: Permission denied
An error occured when trying to install docutils 0.7. Look above this message for any errors that were output by easy_install.
While:
  Installing zope2.12.
  Getting distribution for 'docutils'.
Error: Couldn't install: docutils 0.7


Unfortunately I don't have time to dig deeper into this issue right
now, but here are some comments based on unchecked assumptions:

- the build process must not write anywhere but inside the build
  directory

- the build process must not depend on network connection

- if c/c++ is compiled during build process, setting CFLAGS for the
  compiler needs to be possible. Crosscompiling needs to be supported.
  usually this is done by passing confflags like --build and --host as
  well as CFLAGS to the configure script, which adds them to the
  Makefile.

- if paths and/or links are modified/written during build process, this
  must be configurable. for example options like --prefix are useful in
  configure script, and 'make install' should know environment variables
  like $DESTDIR.

In other words: a way to build and install the software into a custom
directory is required. later when the files are copied to the filesystem
all links and paths need to be correct.

greetings,
 jonas
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 836 bytes
Desc: Digital signature
URL: <http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-zope-developers/attachments/20101019/a6ba6983/attachment.pgp>