1. 3a1 out, 2.2.5 coming, Zope Book in synch with 2.3, Zope.org clustering explained, secret missions, and more, all in this week's Zope Weekly News.

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And Now For Something Completely Different:

Zope Status

by Brian Lloyd

Summary

1. 3 alpha 1 release and 2.2.5 coming soon

Recent News

Last friday we released alpha 1 of Zope 2.3, the first feature release we've had in a while. It includes quite a few usability features, including the debut of Python Scripts, a new way to create the initial user at install time (that avoids having to login as superuser and the problems associated with that) and (gasp) the beginnings of a unit test rig for the Zope core.

So far there have been remarkably few reports of problems with the alpha - I don't know whether that is because not many people have had time to try it out or because the Fishbowl and our "activity-branch" model of development have improved the quality of the work checked into the mainline. I like to think the latter :)

Now that alpha 1 is out, I have updated the Zope 2.3 plan

I've updated the milestones for alpha 2 and added a changelog so that there is a hysterical record of changes to the plan.

In the fishbowl, several projects are about to be officially completed. Python Scripts, Declarative Security Assertions will be marked complete and put in some historical projects area on dev.zope.org soon.

Near Future

I hope to make a 2.2.5 release very soon that will contain fixes for a couple of problems that have surfaced recently. It will contain the fix addressed by the recent 12/08 Hotfix release, as well as a fix for a problem in ZServer that could cause concurrent POST requests to stomp on each other's data. It will also contain fixes for a number of other Collector issues that have been languishing for too long. Look for a 2.2.5 release early on the week of the 18th (sooner, if we can).

Documentation

by Michel Pelletier

Brian's recent announcment of a 2.3 alpha 1 release is a big milestone for us, because this is the first time we can associate a real release of Zope with the book. Up till now, we've had to field constant issues people have with trying to use the book with older versions of Zope and other components, but now we are happy to say the book is meant to be used with 2.3, and any problems you have using Zope 2.3 and the book are real problems and should be reported to us at [email protected].

Last week we announced a content to win free, signed copies of the book for finding errors in the book releated to calling a Script a Method. We have winners! Thanks folks, there are real bugs my eyes missed, and we've fixed them all. As soon as the book hits our local shelves, we'll get your signed copies in the mail. Here are the official winners!

• "jimbo"
• M. Adam Kendall
• Jason Cunliffe
• Lalo Martins
• Jochen Knuth
• Holger Hoffmann
• "Bak@kedai"
• Magnus Heino

We'll be contacting the winners by email. If I sent you an email saying you did win and you're not in this list, fwd: it back to me and we'll get you a book, you may have slipped through the cracks (my mail filtering isn't all that hot).

Interfaces are getting pretty well baked and Jim has added some comments over the weekend that I'll be rolling in this week. If your interested in taking a look at them, you can find them in the lib/python/Interface package in the Zope 2.3 alpha release.

Amos and I are now working on a secret mission, and will drop off the radar for a bit; although we're thinking of maybe running another free book content soon. Keep your eyes peeled.

Zope Web

-- by Ethan Fremen

Zope.org Clustering How-To

Well, it's not really a how-to, but the about page now has a relatively complete description of what goes on at zope.org. In addition, you can look and see how many page hits zope is getting, and how much memory the ZEO Clients are using serving up Zope.org's 700mb object database.

-EOT-