Introducing Plock Again#

A few months ago I introduced Plock: the Plone-installer for the Pip-loving crowd.

A few months ago I introduced Plock: the Plone-installer for the Pip-loving crowd. Then I got sidetracked with the next version of Plock lingering unreleased in master. With the holidays underway I had a chance to revisit Plock and discovered a few things:

  • I still like the idea of Plock.
  • I got carried away adding miscellaneous features to Plock, which only served to ruin the elegance of the idea.
  • I particularly like the idea of moving my hosted configuration files from PythonPackages to Plock. They always felt out of place in PythonPackages but I didn’t have a better place to put them until now.

What is Plock?#

So what is Plock today?

  • A Plone-installer for the Pip-loving crowd. That means someone with Python 2.7 and Pip should be able to install Plone in a matter of minutes with: pip install plock ; plock .
  • A set of hosted configuration files for Plone called Plock Pins. [1]
  • A command line utility with a sharp focus.

Features#

I’ve recently removed several extraneous features from Plock to sharpen the focus on installing Plone and its add-ons. Check out the Plock 0.1.9 --help:

$ plock -h
usage: plock [-h] [-v] [-e] [-a ADD_ON] [-l] [-w] [-r] [install_dir]

Plock is a Plone Installer for the Pip-Loving Crowd

positional arguments:
  install_dir

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -v, --version         show program's version number and exit
  -e, --expert          expert mode
  -a ADD_ON, --add-on ADD_ON
                        install add-ons from PyPI
  -l, --list-addons     list add-ons from PyPI
  -w, --write-config    write buildout.cfg
  -r, --raw             unformatted output, use with -l

Install Plone#

The main focus is on installing Plone to a user-specified installation directory e.g.:

$ plock .

Install Add-ons#

Additionally you may specify an add-on to install e.g.:

$ plock -a Products.PloneFormGen .

Add-on installations are cumulative, so:

$ plock -a Products.PloneFormGen .
$ plock -a collective.loremipsum .

will result in a buildout.cfg file that looks like this:

[buildout]
extends = https://raw.github.com/plock/pins/master/plone-4-3

[plone]
eggs =
    ${addon:packages}
    ${base:packages}
    Products.PloneFormGen
    collective.loremipsum

Add-ons that don’t install via Buildout will not break your installation e.g.:

$ plock -a asdf .
Plock is installing Plone............. error: buildout failed.

When Buildout fails, Plock restores the previous working buildout.cfg for you.

List Add-ons#

Because Plone is more fun with add-ons and because add-ons can be hard to find, Plock will list (and alpha-sort) all the Plone add-ons available from PyPI:

1) 73.unlockItems                           - A small tool for unlocking web_dav locked item in a plone portal.
2) actionbar.panel                          - Provides a (old) facebook style action panel at the bottom of your  Plone site
3) adi.init                                 - Deletes Plone's default contents
4) adi.samplecontent                        - Deletes Plone's default content and adds some sample content
5) adi.slickstyle                           - A slick style for Plone portals, easily extendable for your own styles.
6) anthill.querytool                        - GUI for AdvancedQuery with some extensions - searching the easy way for Plone
7) anthill.skinner                          - Skinning for plone made easy
8) anz.dashboard                            - Plone netvibes like dashboard implementation
9) anz.ijabbar                              - Integrate iJab(an open source XMPP web chat client recommended by xmpp.org) to your plone site.
10) archetypes.clippingimage                 - Image field and/or patch with clipping support for Plone/Archetypes.
…
1,256) zkaffold                                 - Build out demonstration content for plone
1,257) ZopeSkel                                 - Templates and code generator for quickstarting Python, Zope and Plone projects.
1,258) zopeskel.diazotheme                      - Paster templates for Plone Diazo theme package
1,259) zopeskel.niteoweb                        - Paster templates for standard NiteoWeb Plone projects
1,260) zopyx.ecardsng                           - An ECard implementation for Plone
1,261) zopyx.ipsumplone                         - Lorem ipsum text and image demo content for Plone
1,262) zopyx.multieventcalendar                 - A multi-event calendar for Plone 3.X
1,263) zopyx.plone.cassandra                    - Show all assigned local roles within a subtree for any Plone 4 site
1,264) zopyx.plone.migration                    - Export/import scripts for migration Plone 2+3 to Plone 4
1,265) zopyx.smartprintng.plone                 - Produce & Publisher server integration with Plone

Write config#

Lastly, because sometimes you want to write a configuration file without installing Plone there is:

$ plock -w .
Wrote buildout.cfg.

which will result in:

$ cat buildout.cfg
[buildout]
extends = https://raw.github.com/plock/pins/master/plone-4-3
[1]Extending configuration files over the internet is not a universally accepted technique due to the inherent security risk, but it’s how I’ve worked with Plone for years. I once added a “secure” feature to Plock but removed it recently due to the maintenance burden. Plock is now primarily insecure but true to its original goal of simplicity. Maybe security can be re-added later in some semi-elegant way (e.g. cert verification by the client?).