Motivation

Creating zope3 applications is no easy task. This document comes out of a desire to help build a zope3 user community in support of SchoolTool and the CanDo competency tracking application which is being built on top of SchoolTool.

The goal here is to keep things as simple as possible. Zope3 is extremely complex, and the learning curve is steep to say the least. I'm assuming that the aspiring zope3 developer here will be using Ubuntu Breezy (or Dapper), and running their zope instance from their home directly on port 8080.

Installation

There is a bug in the zope3 package (Bug #24173 in zope3 (Ubuntu): "zope3 mkzopeinstance does not keep user id") that prevents this from being an easy process.

As root:

1. make sure you have the following packages installed (apt-get install subversion make gcc python-dev libc6-dev):

   • subversion
   • make
   • gcc
   • python-dev
   • libc6-dev

2. cd /usr/local/src

3. svn co svn://svn.zope.org/repos/main/Zope3/trunk Zope3

4. cd Zope3

5. make

6. python test.py -v (to run all the tests. note use python test.py -vpf1 if a test fails and you want to know which one.)

7. ln -s /usr/local/src/Zope3/bin/mkzopeinstance /usr/local/bin/mkzopeinstance

As the developer:

1. cd ~ (to get to your home directory)

2. mkzopeinstance

3. For Directory: we will be using zope3 in the user's home directory.

4. Choose a username for the initial administrator account.
5. Select a password manager from among: Plain Text, MD5, and SHA1. (Test is least secure, SHA1 is most secure).
6. Enter your password twice.

You should now have a zope3 directory inside your home directory containing an instance of zope3.

Starting zope

As the developer from your home directory, there are two easy ways to start your zope3 instance:

1. ./zope3/bin/runzope

2. ./zope3/bin/zopectl start

Note: You may need to execute runzope the first time as the root user to get around permission problems. Do the following (assuming zopeuser is the user who installed the zope instance:

As root:

1. # /home/zopeuser/zope3/bin/runzope

2. <ctrl>-c  (to stop the zope instance).

3. # chown -R zopeuser:zopeuser /home/zopeuser/zope3

Use should now be able to run your zope intance as zopeuser.

For testing new code use runzope. Messages and debugging information will applear in the console, and you will be able to see when zope fails to start. Keep in mind that when using runzope the application server will stop when you close the terminal from which it is run, so to keep the server running use zopectl start.

CategoryDocumentation