Month: April 2018

“allow-hosts” in buildout considered harmful

Today we had the following error message when re-installing a project from scratch:

 While:
   Installing.
   Getting section application.
   Initializing section application.
   Installing recipe zc.zope3recipes.
   Getting distribution for 'zc.zope3recipes==0.13.0'.
 Error: Couldn't find a distribution for 'zc.zope3recipes==0.13.0'.

Yes this is a really old recipe but it still exists on PyPI. We are using zc.buildout in Version 2.10, and do not use a custom index. So being forced to use HTTPS to access PyPI does not seem be the problem.

After searching way too long we found that .buildout/default.cfg contains the following statement:

allow-hosts =
   *.python.org
   *.gocept.com
   *.gocept.net
   effbot.org
   dist.plone.org

It restricts the allowed hosts for download but it seems to restrict the index, too. https://pypi.python.org/simple nowadays redirects to https://pypi.org/simple which is not on the list.

Suggestion: Remove allow-hosts if possible. It is more harmful than good, especially because packages are nowadays downloaded from https://files.pythonhosted.org.

UPDATE:

I filed an issue for zc.buildout at GitHub: buildout/buildout#447

A heartily welcome for Zope in the Python 3 wonderland

Once upon the time there was Earl Zope II. A wise guy was telling him that his world will come to an end. He found out that this was true that he had only some years to prepare to immigrate to the Python 3 wonderland.

His preparation was successful: He got past the strict immigration check and has now a beta permission to stay in the Python 3 wonderland. Earl Zope really likes his new home, but he is missing some friends. Most of them are still at the border of Python 3 wonderland and have to go through the immigration process. Earl Zope would be pleased to offer the same service to his friends as in the old Python 2 land.

To get the final permission to stay in Python 3 wonderland Earl Zope needs to build up trust in his abilities and his stability by other inhabitants and old friends. Therefore, he has to show, that he can work with old and new friends in the Python 3 wonderland.

Zope 4 Welcome sprint – 16th until 18th May 2018

Earl Zope invites you to join a sprint with some helpful people to welcome Zope 4 and his friends in Python 3 wonderland. This means: Bring in your Zope 2 based application and we look together how to port it to Zope 4 or even Python 3. That’s why we call the sprint “Zope 4 Welcome sprint”. You can also help by posting issues or even pull requests about your migration attempts.

Additionally we look forward to work on an improved version of the ZMI (Zope Management Interface) and to fix some bugs preventing Earl Zope from getting the final permission.

The sprint will be located in Halle (Saale), Germany. We meet there from Wednesday, 16th till Friday, 18th of May 2018. Please join us via Meetup even if you are planning to work from remote. You will find more detailed and updated information about the sprint there, too.