Installing Zope with zc.buildout

This document describes how to get going with Zope using zc.buildout.

About zc.buildout

zc.buildout is a powerful tool for creating repeatable builds of a given software configuration and environment. The Zope developers use zc.buildout to develop Zope itself, as well as the underlying packages it uses.

Prerequisites

In order to use Zope, you must have the following pre-requisites available:

• A supported version of Python, including the development support if installed from system-level packages. Supported versions include:
  • 2.7
  • 3.4
  • 3.5
  • 3.6
• Zope needs the Python zlib module to be importable. If you are building your own Python from source, please be sure that you have the headers installed which correspond to your system’s zlib.
• A C compiler capable of building extension modules for your Python (gcc recommended).

Installing Zope using zc.buildout

In this configuration, we use zc.buildout to install the Zope software, and then generate a server “instance” inside the buildout environment.

Installing the Zope software

Installing the Zope software using zc.buildout involves the following steps:

• Download the Zope 2 source distribution from PyPI
• Bootstrap the buildout
• Run the buildout

On Linux, this can be done as follows:

$ wget https://pypi.python.org/packages/source/Z/Zope2/Zope2-<Zope version>.tar.gz
$ tar xfvz Zope2-<Zope version>.tar.gz
$ cd Zope2-<Zope version>
$ /path/to/your/python bootstrap.py
$ bin/buildout

Creating a Zope instance

Once you’ve installed Zope, you will need to create an “instance home”. This is a directory that contains configuration and data for a Zope server process. The instance home is created using the mkwsgiinstance script:

$ bin/mkwsgiinstance -d .

You will be asked to provide a user name and password for an administrator’s account during mkwsgiinstance. To see the available command-line options, run the script with the --help option:

$ bin/mkwsgiinstance --help

After installation, refer to Configuring and Running Zope for documentation on configuring and running Zope.

Building the documentation with Sphinx

To build the HTML documentation, run the make-docs script (installed by the buildout):

$ bin/make-docs