Eggnest - a product folder for buildout

Summary: Try out buildout.eggnest

A couple of weeks ago, me, Martin and Robin in Webworks had a coffee break and were kicking around ideas of how to make Plone more user-friendly for the administrator. The new Plone distributions are buildout based, and it is easy to add a product to your Plone server if you add one or more lines to your buildout.cfg file(s).

However that is only simple if you know where to add them in the file(s), and we guessed that some people might feel intimidated from the thought of editing such a complex settings file.

In the olden days of Plone distributions, you would add a product by dropping it into a products folder. What if you could make a "products" folder for buildout? Each file would  just contain buildout configuration lines for one product. That is a simpler user interface than buildout.cfg. You make a folder and drop files in it, one for each product. No need to understand buildout syntax.

Well, Martin Lundwall kept thinking about this idea, and created an egg for buildout that does just that. It is called buildout.eggnest and can be found here at the cheeseshop. It is a proof of concept but seems to work.

I tried it out with PloneArticle, I installed buildout.eggnest, designated a folder as the eggnest folder, created a file with only the settings for PloneArticle (the ones listed at the PloneArticle page at Plone.org) and dropped it in the designated eggnest folder. I reran buildout, and lo, PloneArticle was downloaded and installed.

If this turns out to be a good concept, each provider of a product could provide a text snippet in a file (it could e.g. be called a ".nestegg" file) and that file could be dropped into the eggnest and I at least think that might entice more people to try out and work with Plone.