CVS Repository Organization

The central CVS repository, at http://cvs.zope.org, hosts Zope applications and components. The repository is organized to simplify composition of the lements. (See RepositoryOrganizationNotes for more details about the principles behind the organization.)

CVS modules are key tools in pursuit of this goal. Modules are descriptions (found in the CVSROOT bookkeeping file named modules) which dictate arrangement of repository directories into composite "virtual directories". Standalone applications (like Zope and StandaloneZODB^x) and application-specific collections (like the CMF) are created this way.

For a current list of the top-level modules, checkout README.txt from the root of the repository:

    cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@cvs.zope.org:/cvs-repository co README.txt

Or visit the current version via the repository web interface, at http://cvs.zope.org .

The Top-Level Repository Directories

Products

Python-based Zope extensions. These typically define new types of Zope objects, often ones that populate the management-interface "add" list.

Packages

Python "packages" - directories of python modules having an __init__.py - that are part of an application, but not unitary Products in their own right. Many of these are knitted into the lib/python directory of Zope software home by the Zope module.

Releases

This is where the skeletons of the top-level Zope modules reside. These skeletons contain the parts of the application specific to that application - with other parts, like packages and products, knitted together by the module definition from the other module top-level directories.

Docs

Zope-related documentation collections.

Cruft

Stuff that doesn't belong anywhere else. Some is legacy spillover that needs to be put in its proper place, some just doesn't have a proper place, and will reside forever in (sob) Cruft.

Zope2

The prior, monolithic organization of the what is now the Zope module. We will not be applying any changes to this module, and plan to soon (as of July, 2001) to remove it entirely, once people have the chance to switch over to the Zope module.

This old organization made it hard to decompose things like StandaloneZODB^x and ZEO, and so is being deprecated.