[Pkg-zope-developers] Consider adding a reference to "plone-site" to the plone description (at the very least)

Jürgen A. Erhard jae+debian at jerhard.org
Tue Apr 4 23:14:30 UTC 2006


(This started as a bug report to plone, but since it's too general, I
sent it to the list directly... no idea if it works)

I installed plone (as many would do) from Debian unstable, and...
woah, not even a running zope instance.

The docs... /usr/share/doc/plone has nothing on either plone-site or
how to get Zope running.  Ah, yes, it's in zope-common... and how many
users will look there?  You know, Zope is quite intimidating, no need
to make it harder or more frustrating than it already is. ;)

Hmm, I searched and found a "Debian Zope Policy"... which looks way
outdated to me.  So, what *is* the policy?  Is there one?  If so, does
it mandate "don't create a default instance on installation"?  Or did
I miss the announcement that Debian does not enable a server when they
are installed anymore.

I'd just like Zope to be more accessible.  And I don't think the
current packaging is really achieving this.  You might think it's
oh-so-clear... but I think it's pretty obvious it isn't.

Three alternative plans I can think of how to make this better:

  + rename plone to plone-raw (or something similar), and plone-site
    to plone.  This way, if a user wants Plone, they get it.  Running.
    
  + Add a README.Debian to the actual zopeX.Y packages, refering the
    user (which bear reminding, is not just a user, but root) to the
    actual documentation.
    
  + Offer creating a default instance on installation of zopeX.Y.

Take your pick(s) (all three could be done together even).  But the
status we have now... no, that can't be it.  IMSPAO, of course.

Bye, J

PS: I actually purged all zope stuff due to my installation having been
way out of date, and installed everything freshly with a simple
"apt-get install plone"

PPS: I'll spare you my pet-peeve rant about "treating users as idiots"
here, though "you have to install $XYZZY-site to get an actual running
Zope" almost made me...  On the other hand, it (also) smells of
assuming too much on the side of the user, like the user realizing
(how?) that he/she wants plone-site instead of plone.  Or finding the
way to dzhandle in zope-common.  Weird...

-- 
                            Jürgen A. Erhard
                     My WebHome: http://jerhard.org
            Key signing coordination (http://biglumber.com)
                     Shah, shah!  Ayatollah you so!
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