Plone 5.2 From Coredev And PrintingMailHost

I usually don’t configure a mailhost for my local development environment. Thus I use the Products.PrintingMailHost to stop Plone from sending out emails and print into the shell instead.

I read about the porting work of this product/tool to Python 3 on:
https://www.starzel.de/blog/python-3-and-more and wanted to try this version out. I added the product to my buildout script ‘local.cfg’ but without success. Buildout fetched the product and I could change its branch to ‘python3’ but it had didn’t work. Its patch wasn’t applied to the Plone mailhost.

I solved this issue by adding ‘ENABLE_PRINTING_MAILHOST   True’ to the ‘environment-vars =’ entry of the ‘[instance]’ of ‘core.cfg’.

It looks as follows yet:

environment-vars =
        zope_i18n_compile_mo_files true
        ENABLE_PRINTING_MAILHOST True

The printing mailhost is working as expected yet.

Worked On Migration Of Plone Addons To Python 3

I created a new clean buildout from the Plone coredev Github repository using a checkout of the 5.2 branch. I added a local.cfg file to my local repo and added some packages to this file. This packages were checked out within the next run of buildout using the new local.cfg buildout file, extending buildout.cfg.

I created the local.cfg using the pointer from this webpage:
https://github.com/plone/Products.CMFPlone/issues/2184#issuecomment-359445243

I added a further section to the local.cfg for ‘mr.bob’. Thus my local.cfg looks like this:

[buildout]
extends = buildout.cfg

parts += mrbob

always-checkout = true

custom-eggs +=
        collective.dexteritytextindexer
        bobtemplates.plone

        
test-eggs +=
        collective.dexteritytextindexer [test]
        
        
auto-checkout +=
        collective.dexteritytextindexer
        bobtemplates.plone
        
[mrbob]
recipe = zc.recipe.egg
eggs =
    mr.bob
    bobtemplates.plone
        
        
[sources]
collective.dexteritytextindexer = git git://github.com/andreasma/collective.dexteritytextindexer
bobtemplates.plone = git git://github.com/plone/bobtemplates.plone.git

I created a new branch inside the collective.dexterity local repository with ‘git checkout -b python3’ and did on this branch the steps that are described on this website:
https://github.com/plone/Products.CMFPlone/issues/2184

I run sixer and python-modernize on the package and was able to get it running with Plone 5.2 on Python 3.6. I already created a new Plone site from scratch for this.

Then I created a new Plone add-on package using mr.bob and run sixer and python-modernize against the new package. Once this was finished I added the package to the local.cfg buildout script and run buildout again. I was able to start the Plone site with ‘./bin/instance fg’ without issues again. I installed the new addon within the ‘Site Setup’ page of Plone. The new addon had no real content at that time (only the necessary boilerplate / template).

This created the environment to migrate the current state of my Plone addons to the new Plone 5.2 version and Python 3. This migration is necessary because the support for  Python 2, currently used by Plone, ends within a year.

Working In A Calm Environment

It’s interesting how much spare you gain once you withdraw from a busy message environment. This helps to invest more time into more healthy acitivities (like outdoor runners training). It makes it also possible for me to concentrate more on improving my skills on Plone and Python and work on the migration of Plone addons to the next Plone main release, 5.2, running on Python 3.

And it is also interesting to notice the difference between the official speach of people about the volunteer work you have done and the real rating of that work. That helps to reclassify things and justify my direction.

Worked On Migration Of A Plone Addon to Plone 5.2 With Python 3

I started with my work to migrate a first Plone addon to Plone 5.2 on Python 3. I did this work on the addon cioppino.twothumbs. I first applied ‘sixer’ on it and than run ‘python-modernizer’ as described on this page. But I got some errors with the imports afterwards, once I started the Plone instance with ‘fg’. This imports were implicite relative. I changed them to explicite relative or absolute. The addon is running yet in the Plone instance. But there is a remaining issue with the css-file of the addon. I pushed my changes to the new git branch ‘python3’: https://github.com/tdf/cioppino.twothumbs/commits/python3.

Working Further With Plone and Python 3

I created a further buildout for Plone from the Plone coredev Github repository and checked out the 5.2 branch. The buildout went fine and I could create a new Plone site.

I tried out to create a new add-on with bobtemplates and it worked with my new Plone site (on Python 3.6). I was able to install the add-on without errors. I’ll try out some further add-ons with this buildout using my own extension of the core buildout script. I’m curious, if this add-ons will work with my buildout. If they will not run on Python 3 I’ll try to upgrade them.