Buildout I#

In this part you will:

Learn about Buildout

Topics covered:

Buildout
Recipes
Buildout Configuration
mr.developer

Buildout composes your application for you, according to your rules.

To compose your application you must define the eggs you need, which version, what configuration files Buildout has to generate for you, what to download and compile, and so on. Buildout downloads the eggs you requested and resolves all dependencies. You might need five different eggs, but in the end, Buildout has to install 300 eggs, all with the correct version in order to resolve all the dependencies.

Buildout does this without touching your system Python or affecting any other package. The commands created by buildout bring all the required packages into the Python environment. Each command it creates may use different libraries or even different versions of the same library.

Plone needs folders for logfiles, databases and configuration files. Buildout assembles all of this for you.

You will need a lot of functionality that Buildout does not provide out of the box, so you'll need several extensions. Some extensions provide new functionality, like mr.developer, the best way to manage your checked out sources.

Minimal Example#

Here is a functioning minimal example from collective/minimalplone5:

[buildout]
parts = instance
extends = https://dist.plone.org/release/5.2-latest/versions.cfg

[instance]
recipe = plone.recipe.zope2instance
eggs =
    Plone

Syntax#

The syntax of Buildout configuration files is similar to classic ini files. You write a parameter name, an equals sign and the value. If you enter another value in the next line and indent it, Buildout understands that both values belong to the parameter name, and the parameter stores all values as a list.

A Buildout consists of multiple sections. Sections start with the section name in square brackets. Each section declares a different part of your application. As a rough analogy, your Buildout file is a cookbook with multiple recipes.

There is a special section, called [buildout]. This section can change the behavior of Buildout itself. The variable parts defines which of the existing sections should actually be used.

Recipes#

Buildout itself has no idea how to install Zope. Buildout is a plugin based system, it comes with a small set of plugins to create configuration files and download eggs with their dependencies and the proper version.

To install a Zope site, you need a third-party plugin. The plugins provide new recipes that you have to declare and configure in their own respective sections.

One example is the section

[instance]
recipe = plone.recipe.zope2instance
user = admin:admin

This uses the python package plone.recipe.zope2instance to create and configure the Zope 2 instance which we use to run Plone.

All the lines after recipe = xyz are the configuration of the specified recipe.

Note

There are way to many buidout-recipes. See https://pypi.org/search/?q=buildout+recipe

References#

Buildout allows you to use references in the configuration. A variable declaration may not only hold the variable value, but also a reference to where to look for the variable value.

If you have a big setup with many Plone sites with minor changes between each configuration, you can generate a template configuration, and each site references everything from the template and overrides just what needs to be changed.

Even in smaller buildouts this is a useful feature. We are using collective.recipe.omelette. A very practical recipe that creates a virtual directory that eases the navigation to the source code of each egg.

The omelette recipe needs to know which eggs to reference. We want the same eggs that our instance uses, so we reference the eggs of the instance instead of repeating the whole list.

Another example: Say you create configuration files for a webserver like nginx, you can define the target port for the reverse proxy by looking it up from the zope2instance recipe.

Configuring complex systems always involves a lot of duplication of information. Using references in the buildout configuration allows you to minimize these duplications.

A real life example#

Let us walk through the buildout.cfg for the training and look at some important variables:

[buildout]
extends =
    http://dist.plone.org/release/5.2/versions.cfg
    versions.cfg
extends-cache = extends-cache

extensions = mr.developer
# Tell mr.developer to ask before updating a checkout.
always-checkout = true
show-picked-versions = true
sources = sources

# The directory this buildout is in. Modified when using vagrant.
buildout_dir = ${buildout:directory}

# We want to checkouts these eggs directly from github
auto-checkout =
    ploneconf.site
#    starzel.votable_behavior

parts =
    checkversions
    instance
    mrbob
    packages
    robot
    test
    zopepy

eggs =
    Plone
    Pillow

# development tools
    plone.reload
    Products.PDBDebugMode
    plone.app.debugtoolbar
    Products.PrintingMailHost
    pdbpp

# TTW Forms
    collective.easyform

# The add-on we develop in the training
    ploneconf.site

# Voting on content
#    starzel.votable_behavior

zcml =

test-eggs +=
    ploneconf.site [test]

[instance]
recipe = plone.recipe.zope2instance
user = admin:admin
http-address = 8080
debug-mode = on
verbose-security = on
deprecation-warnings = on
eggs = ${buildout:eggs}
zcml = ${buildout:zcml}
file-storage = ${buildout:buildout_dir}/var/filestorage/Data.fs
blob-storage = ${buildout:buildout_dir}/var/blobstorage

[test]
recipe = zc.recipe.testrunner
eggs = ${buildout:test-eggs}
defaults = ['--auto-color', '-vvv']

[robot]
recipe = zc.recipe.egg
eggs =
    ${buildout:test-eggs}
    Pillow
    plone.app.robotframework[reload,debug]

[packages]
recipe = collective.recipe.omelette
eggs = ${buildout:eggs}
location = ${buildout:buildout_dir}/packages

[checkversions]
recipe = zc.recipe.egg
eggs = z3c.checkversions [buildout]

[zopepy]
recipe = zc.recipe.egg
eggs =
    ${buildout:eggs}
# need to explicitly mention plone.staticresources in order for plone-compile-resources to be found
    plone.staticresources
interpreter = zopepy
scripts =
    zopepy
    plone-compile-resources

[mrbob]
recipe = zc.recipe.egg
eggs =
    mr.bob
    bobtemplates.plone

[sources]
ploneconf.site = git https://github.com/collective/ploneconf.site.git pushurl=git@github.com:collective/ploneconf.site.git
starzel.votable_behavior = git https://github.com/collective/starzel.votable_behavior.git pushurl=git://github.com/collective/starzel.votable_behavior.git

When you run ./bin/buildout without any arguments, Buildout will look for this file.

Note

If you are using the vagrant installation, you will have to activate your virtualenv and run the command buildout only. In the vagrant setup zc.buildout and setuptools are installed in the virtualenv and therefore available without specifying the preceding path. This is possible because in recent versions of zc.buildout the bootstrap step is no longer necessary.

Let us look closer at some variables.

extends =
    http://dist.plone.org/release/5.2/versions.cfg

This line tells Buildout to read another configuration file. You can refer to configuration files on your computer or to configuration files on the Internet, reachable via http. You can use multiple configuration files to share configurations between multiple Buildouts, or to separate different aspects of your configuration into different files. Typical examples are version specifications, or configurations that differ between different environments.

eggs =
    Plone

# development tools
    z3c.jbot
    plone.reload
    Products.PDBDebugMode
    plone.app.debugtoolbar
    Products.PrintingMailHost
    pdbpp

# TTW Forms
    collective.easyform

# The add-on we develop in the training
    ploneconf.site

# Voting on content
#    starzel.votable_behavior

zcml =

test-eggs +=
    ploneconf.site [test]

This is the list of eggs that we configure to be available for Zope. These eggs are put in the python path of the script bin/instance with which we start and stop Plone.

The egg Plone is a wrapper without code. Among its dependencies is Products.CMFPlone which is the egg that is at the center of Plone.

The rest are add-ons we already used or will use later. The last eggs are commented out so they will not be installed by Buildout.

The file versions.cfg that is included by the extends = ... statement holds the version pins:

[versions]
# dev tools and their dependencies
pdbpp = 0.10.0
fancycompleter = 0.8
pyrepl = 0.9.0

# pins for Add-ons
collective.easyform = 2.1.0
Products.validation = 2.1.1

# pins for mr.bob and bobtemplates.plone
bobtemplates.plone = 4.1.3
case-conversion = 2.1.0
mr.bob = 0.1.2

# Some other pins from coredev
argh = 0.26.2
pathtools = 0.1.2
prompt-toolkit = 1.0.16
PyYAML = 5.1.2
regex = 2019.8.19
watchdog = 0.9.0
wcwidth = 0.1.7
wmctrl = 0.3

This is another special section. By default buildout will look for version pins in a section called [versions]. This is why we included the file versions.cfg.

Mr. Developer#

There are many more important things to know, and we can't go through them all in detail but I want to focus on one specific feature: mr.developer

With mr.developer you can declare which packages you want to check out from which version control system and which repository URL. You can check out sources from git, svn, bzr, hg and maybe more. Also, you can say that some sources are in your local file system.

mr.developer comes with a command, ./bin/develop. You can use it to update your code, to check for changes and so on. You can activate and deactivate your source checkouts. If you develop your extensions in eggs with separate checkouts, which is a good practice, you can plan releases by having all source checkouts deactivated, and only activate them when you write changes that require a new release. You can activate and deactivate eggs via the develop command or the Buildout configuration. You should always use the Buildout way. Your commit serves as documentation.

Extensible#

You might have noticed that most if not all functionality is only available via plugins. One of the things that Buildout excels at without any plugin is the dependency resolution. You can help Plone in dependency resolution by declaring exactly which version of an egg you want.

This is only one use case. Another one is much more important: If you want to have a repeatable Buildout, one that works two months from now.

Also, you must declare all your egg versions, else Buildout might install newer versions.

Be McGuyver#

As you can see, you can build very complex systems with Buildout. It is time for some warnings. Be selective in your recipes. Supervisor is a program to manage running servers, and it's pretty good. There is a recipe for it.

The configuration for this recipe is more complicated than the supervisor configuration itself! By using this recipe, you force others to understand the recipe's specific configuration syntax and the supervisor syntax. For such cases, collective.recipe.template is a better match.

Another problem is error handling. Buildout tries to install a weird dependency you do not actually want? Buildout will not tell you where it is coming from.

If there is a problem, you can always run Buildout with -v to get more verbose output, sometimes it helps.

$ ./bin/buildout -v

If strange egg versions are requested, check the dependencies declaration of your eggs and your version pinnings. Here is an invaluable shell command that allows you to find all packages that depend on a particular egg and version:

$ grep your.egg.name.here /home/vagrant/buildout-cache/eggs/*.egg/EGG-INFO/requires.txt

Put the name of the egg with a version conflict as the first argument. Also, change the path to the buildout cache folder according to your installation (the vagrant buildout is assumed in the example).

Some parts of Buildout interpret egg names case sensitively, others don't. This can result in funny problems.

Always check out the ordering of your extends, always use the annotate command of Buildout to see if it interprets your configuration differently than you. Restrict yourself to simple Buildout files. You can reference variables from other sections, you can even use a whole section as a template. We learned that this does not work well with complex hierarchies and had to abandon that feature.

In the chapter Buildout II: Getting Ready for Deployment we will have a look at a production-ready buildout for Plone that has many useful features.

Buildout I

Contents

Buildout I#

Minimal Example#

Syntax#

Recipes#

References#

A real life example#

Mr. Developer#

Extensible#

Be McGuyver#