Tag: gocept

The final teardown

After writing so many teardowns in tests for software projects for customers, open source projects and in house software, it is now time for the gocept folks to finally work on a last teardown of the company itself. After 23 years of existence gocept will close the doors and stop operating business at 2023-11-30. The developers found a new home at the wonderful company Minddistrict. There we will work in a product team and build software to empower people to take care of their mental well-being.

Customers

We want to thank all our customers for their trust in us over the years and for the often multi year long collaboration. Sometimes gocept was a bit on the bleeding edge of technology and often that was shining through in the development work. But we did our best to provide the individual software applications to the needs of our customers.

Open Source Software

It was in the very essence of gocept to work with open source software. The company grew with Zope and contributed to the Zope ecosystem. Out of this relationship many events were supported like DZUG-Tagung, a EuroPython Conference and in particular in the last years a round of Zope sprint to ensure compatibility and stability in the Python 3 wonderland. We are very happy, that Minddistrict also builds its core product on zope.* packages and that we can further contribute to the open source world.

Most of the gocept.* packages on https://github.com/gocept have been archived or given to the people and companies, that still use them. In case you need to work with them, please contact mail@gocept.com or the respective maintainers on PyPI. We will be able to unarchive the package and if necessary transfer the release rights.

gocept folks

Some parts of gocept already left the company in 2014 and formed https://flyingcircus.io/. They are more successful than ever providing a very good and individual hosting and, more important, operation solutions for bigger applications and complex setups. They took over the dedication to software and to new technology, and they are good colleagues to work with.

The remaining 4 developers at gocept join the Minddistrict company and will work there in a bigger team to empower people to take care of their mental well-being in the Netherlands, in Germany and the DACH-region. We will still keep an office in Halle, so there might be a chance to stop by.

The last Christian of gocept (in a row of many) will continue his management work within the Saltlabs and the Koffij – with the mission to develop modern, contemporary and flexible workplaces in Halle and build communities that motivate and offer pleasant working environments.

gocept.cleanup()

In case you need anything or want to reach us, please find us on GitHub (or the place to be in the future) or write an email to mail@gocept.com.

Ready, set, sprint: Earl Zope invites again

Sprint with Earl Zope at September, 21st and 22nd of 2023.

Earl Zope is already a long time inhabitant of the Python 3 wonderland. Living here for some years with the help of his friends, he sometimes looks back to the “good old times” but mostly enjoys his current live with all its surprises and unexpected turns.

Gocept invites you to sprint for Earl Zope’s future well-being: 21st till 22nd of September 2023 in the SaltLabs of Halle, Germany. Participants of the sprint are also invited to join the gocept-23 party at 23rd of September 2023.

This sprint will the last one hosted by gocept as the company will go new ways by the end of the year. To join please register via meetup.com. (After registering for the sprint, you’ll get the party invitation.)

Sprint with Earl Zope in April of 2022

Sprint with Earl Zope at April, 13th 2022 towards Python 3.11 compatibility.

Earl Zope – once in a while – needs some help to feel well again in the ever changing Python 3 wonderland.

Please join a one-day-sprint at April, 13th 2022 organized by gocept to make Earl Zope more comfortable with the current Python 3.10 and the upcoming Python 3.11.

Especially the new upcoming version has some bitter surprises for Earl Zope: The C-code of some of his dependencies will no longer compile without modifications. An example dependency is already ported, so it should be possible to port other ones by the monkey-see-monkey-do principle.

The sprint will be a pure online-sprint. If you want to join please register via meetup.com.

Goodbye, Forsterstraße. Hello Saltlabs!

After more than 10 years we left our beloved office with its beautiful garden a few weeks ago and moved into “Saltlabs” in the center of Halle – which was created as a workplace for IT companies, featuring a coffee bar, shared infrastructure (kitchen, fast network, meeting rooms with large screens) and will also get a large coworking space next year.

Our new address:

gocept gmbh & co. kg
Leipziger Straße 70
06108 Halle (Saale)
Germany

If you are in Halle, be sure to stop by and have a coffee with us. 🙂

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.

Zope 2 Resurrection Sprint – Day 1

Welcome to the Zope 2 Resurrection Sprint in Halle (Saale), Germany. We hope you enjoyed the time since the Last call for take off to the Python 3 wonderland.

We already achieved some things:

We discussed the following topics:

  • Use pytest as test framework and test runner for the Zope projects?
    • We decided against this suggestion as it is to much hassle for a too little gain.
    • Using zope.testrunner is not too different from stdlib’s unittest.
    • zope.testrunner it has the really helpful layers feature which is heavily used in Zope and especially Plone. There is no equivalent in pytest for this concept. This would require to rewrite the whole test infrastructure or use a tool like gocept.pytestlayer which coverts layers into purest fixtures – but has its own problems doing this.
  • Improve the situation of continuous integration for the Zope packages:
    • Sometimes tests of a package break because a dependency has changed its behaviour. This does not get noticed until someone makes a change to the package which triggers Travis-CI. It is sometimes really hard to find out which change in which package caused the test failures when the tests are only run at code changes. (Current example: zope.testbrowser which broke because of a change in WebTest.)
    • Hanno activated the cron jobs Travis-CI beta feature for most of the Zope related packages. (This currently requires clicking in the Travis-CI UI and still has to be done for most of the ZTK packages.) Currently it is not clear what happens if such a cron job fails.
    • The Jenkins of the Plone Foundation is also able to test the Zope packages: it could be configured to run them on a regular basis.
    • Tres suggests to use bin/test instead of python setup.py test to run the tests as the latter one is no longer liked by the Python Packaging Authority folks.

Last call for take off to the Python 3 wonderland

Last information for Zope 2 Resurrection Sprint

We are approaching the Zope 2 Resurrection Sprint and hope that all those who are willing to help earl Zope II on his endeavor to port his realm have already prepared there horses and packed the necessary equipment to arrive in Halle (Saale), Germany.

To help with the preparations we have set up some means of communication:

Etherpad

In the Etherpad we have collected a fundamental set of obstacles that the immigration authority of Python 3 wonderland send to earl Zope II via a mounted messenger. If there are additional problems we need to solve with the immigration or other authorities, feel free to point those out in the pad.

IRC Channel

During the sprint we will have an owl waiting for messages in the #sprint channel on irc.freenode.net, so additional information and questions can be placed there.

General Schedule

In general the gates of the gocept manor in Halle (Saale) are open from 8:00 till 18:00 during the sprint for the squires to help earl Zope II. There will be some refreshments in the morning (8:00 – 9:00) and during lunch time (12:00 – 13:00) in order to keep everyone happy and content.

Apart from that, there will be some fixed points in time to meet:

  • Monday 2017-05-01
    • 19:00 CEST, pre-sprint get-together for early arrivals at Anny Kilkenny. Attention: There will be a bigger political demonstration in Halle which might impact the arrival here, take that into consideration.
  • Tuesday 2017-05-02
    • 9:00 CEST, official welcome and sprint planning afterwards.
    • 16:30-17:30 CEST, Discussion: TBD
    • 18:00 CEST, guided tour through the city of Halle, meeting point
    • 19:30 CEST, dinner and get-together at Wenzels Bierstuben, location, separate bills
  • Wednesday 2017-05-03
    • 9:00 CEST, daily meeting and review
    • 16:30-18:00 CEST, Discussion: TDB
    • 19:00 CEST, BBQ evening in the lovely garden at gocept manor
  • Thursday 2017-05-04
  • Friday 2017-05-05
    • 9:00 CEST, daily meeting and review
    • 13:00 CEST, sprint closing session with review and possibility to present lightning talks of your projects.

We are looking forward to the sprint and hope to overcome the remaining migration problems of earl Zope II.

Zope at the turnpike of the Python 3 wonderland

A little tale

Once upon the time there was an earl named Zope II. He lived happily in a land called Python 2. Since some years there where rumours that a huge disaster would hit the country. The people ironically used to call it “sunset”. Prophets arose and said that 2020 would be the year where this disaster would finally happen.

Zope II got anxious about his future and the future of his descendants. But there were some brave people who liked Zope II and told him of the Python 3 wonderland. A land of eternal joy and happiness without “sunset” disasters and with no problems at all. It seemed like a dream to Zope II – too nice to be true?

After some research it became clear that the Python 3 wonderland was real – not completely as advertised by the people but nice to live in. So Zope II set the goal to settle down in the Python 3 wonderland before the “sunset” disaster would happen.

But this was not as easy as it seemed to be. The immigrant authority told Zope II that he is “not compatible” with the Python 3 wonderland and that he needs “to be ported” to be able to breath the special Python 3 air.

As if this was not enough: As an earl Zope II was not able to migrate without his staff, the many people he relied on for his daily procedures. Some of them have been found to be “ported” already thus they were already “compatible” for the new country. But there was one old, but very important servant of Zope II named RestrictedPython. Zope II could not live without him – but he got told that he never will be “compatible”. The authority even required a “complete rewrite”.

The Python 3 wonderland seemed so near but is was so difficult to reach. But there where so many people who helped Zope II and encouraged him not to give up. Eventually it seemed to be possible for Zope II to get beyond the turnpike into the wonderful land called Python 3.

Back in reality

We are the people who like Zope II and help him to get past the turnpike into Python 3. Since the Alpine City Sprint earlier this month RestrictedPython is no longer a blocker for other packages depending on it to be ported.

Come, join us porting the remaining dependencies of Zope and Zope itself to Python 3. There will be a Zope 2 Resurrection Sprint in May this year in Halle (Saale), Germany at gocept. Join us on site or remote.

Last minute information for remote Sprinters for the Zope Resurrection Sprint

As the Zope Resurrection sprint is approaching, it seems useful to share some information on the schedule for the three days in Halle. As we have also some sprinters, who can not join on site, but might want to join remotely, a few key facts might come in handy.

Etherpad

There is the Etherpad, where the current list of topics is collected. Most of the stories we are going to tackle will be based on this list. In case you have something to add, or are interested in a specific topic in particular, it is a good idea to add your thoughts before the start of the sprint.

IRC Channel

During the sprint we will communicate via the #sprint channel on irc.freenode.net, so additional information and questions can be placed there.

Google Hangout

As the sprint is also intended to foster discussions about the future of Zope, we want to encourage as many people as possible to join. Therefore, we have a hangout where we will meet.

Scheduled Discussions

At the moment we plan the following session:

  • Wednesday 2016-09-28 10:00 CEST, duration 1 h: Introduction to WSGI in Zope 4 by Hanno Schlichting (hannosh) + discussion
  • Wednesday 2016-09-28 14:00 CEST, duration 2 h: Discussion about through-the web (TTW) pattern and the underlying RestrictedPython
  • Thursday 2016-09-29 10:00 CEST, duration 0.5 h: Discussion about the necessity and future of ZTK
  • Friday 2016-09-30 14:00 CEST, duration 1 h: Discussion about the Zope 5

So in case you want to contribute remotely to the sprint, please join us on one of the three ways.

 

Zope in the Python 3 wonderland

A little tale

Once upon the time there was the big mighty Zope II. It was one of the leaders in the Python land. It had mighty features like TTW (trough the web) development and its own object oriented database. Many people liked Zope II and trusted it to be the basis for their personal work and the work of their companies.

After some years Zope II got a son named Zope III. It could have been even mightier and more trustworthy than Zope II. But some people argued that Zope III is too complex and too hard to understand and way too different from Zope II which they knew very well.

New, faster and easier to understand frameworks arose beside Zope II and Zope III and the people began to like the new ones more. After many years of power, Zope became weak. Its name got hated by many people in its country. It even got nearly forgotten.

But there are still the people out in the far away kingdoms who built a complete ecosystem on the shoulders of Zope. They cannot completely change the basis of their work within months or even years. They deserve a perspective even for the Python 3 wonderland which is no longer a vague dream but already a future with wide open doors.

Back in reality

We are here to help Zope to find a new home in the Python 3 land and live there happily a great many years. Therefore we scheduled a Sprint named Zope Resurrection Sprint where we will discuss and code on Zope to get it more Python 3 ready.

The big blocker is currently RestrictedPython which relies on modules which are no longer in the Python 3 standard library. But RestrictedPython is an important part of the TTW security concept, so it has to be rewritten from scratch. Folks who think they do not need TTW in their projects can work on a Zope where RestrictedPython is optional.

Besides the Python 3 migration of the code the contents of the application databases using Zope need a conversion, too. On a previous sprint in Berlin, we wrote a possible solution: zodb.py3migrate which needs some more tests with real databases.

Furthermore, there is Zope IV, the successor of Zope II which needs some love to become strong and ready for its adventurous journey as the basis of Plone VI and others.

It is still possible to join the sprint either in Halle (Saale), Germany or remote. We are looking forward to a good time to put up the banner of Zope in the Python land again.