[Koha-devel] Suggestion for Editing New Koha Site

[Thomas Dukleth]

On Mon, May 11, 2009 5:06 pm, Joshua Ferraro wrote:
> On Mon, May 11, 2009 at 12:22 PM, Nicole Engard
> <nicole.engard at liblime.com> wrote:
>> I'm not putting this in the existing thread because it might be lost,
>> but I have a suggestion.  How about we follow our Koha model for the
>> Koha website and put the templates and CSS into GIT.  That way
>> everyone can make edits and help fix the templates?  Then we just need
>> a Website Manager who approved patches - but at least we all have
>> access to everything and can work together - which is our strong suit
>> :)

An excellent suggestion Nicole.  I have been considering how best to
accomplish that task for Zope.

> Unfortunately, the CSS and Templates are in Zope, and can't be
> version-controlled via Git. They are not flat files, but reside in an
> OO Database.

Joshua is right but there is a way around the limitation that Zope content
is not stored as flat files.

Zope stores content in a Zope object database which provides its own
internal version control.  Unfortunately, when pickelling Zope folders for
export the version control history has been lost in my experience.  The
pickelled file is basically a blob which is useless in a version control
system but would allow others to experiment in their own instance of Zope.
 Zope products such as Plone are part of the file system and can be
readily modified on the file system if necessary.

FSDump was created for the purpose of managing the content of the Zope
object database outside of Zope in an external version control system,
http://zope.org/Members/tseaver/FSDump/view .  While, it only provides one
way management and does not support submitting changes back to Zope, it
could be used as an intermediate process in which changes would be
submitted manually back to Zope.  Maybe it would serve best for some parts
such as CSS and less well for other parts such as supplying translation
strings where the Plone user interface would be especially helpful.

Wherever the actual editing is done, changes could be periodically stored
in an external version control system.  However, I suggest using an
external version control system as much as may be practical.

Zfolder2Product creates a custom Zope product for the contents of a Zope
object database folder which can then be used in an external version
control system, http://sourceforge.net/projects/zfolder2product .  I am
somewhat doubtful about the utility of editing a Zope Plone instance as a
Zope product although it Zfolder2Product may solve the automated import
problem.

[...]


Thomas Dukleth
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