Before we can create a buildout to manage Zope and Plone, there are a few prerequisites to take care of.

First, you will need an appropriate Python interpreter, if you do not have one already:

• Install Python 2.4 for your platform, and add it to your system PATH. It is easiest if Python 2.4 is what you get when you type python -V on a command line.
• If you installed Python using an operating system package (e.g. an RPM), make sure you get the development package (e.g. python-devel) as well. This includes Python header files that we will use later to compile Zope. If you installed from source, or used the Python Windows installer, you should already have these.
  
• Install PIL, the Python Imaging Library into this Python interpreter.

Then, download ez_setup.py and run it with:

$ python ez_setup.py

This will download and install setuptools and the easy_install script. Watch the console output to understand where easy_install is installed. If this is not in your system PATH, you should add this directory to the path as well.

Finally, use easy_install to get ZopeSkel, a collection of skeleton templates for Zope and Plone development:

$ easy_install -U ZopeSkel

This will get Paste Script and various other dependencies. If you added the Python console scripts directory (where easy_install was placed) to your system path, you should now be able to run the paster command. You can test it with:

$ paster create --list-templates
Available templates:
  basic_namespace:          A project with a namespace package
  basic_package:            A basic setuptools-enabled package
  basic_zope:               A Zope project
  nested_namespace:         A project with two nested namespaces.
  plone:                    A Plone project
  plone2.5_theme:           A Theme for Plone 2.5
  plone2_theme:             A Theme for Plone 2.1 & Plone 2.5
  plone3_buildout:          A buildout for Plone 3 projects
  plone3_theme:             A Theme for Plone 3.0
  plone_app:                A Plone App project

Your output may differ slightly, but make sure you have the plone3_buildout and plone templates at least.

Additional installation steps for Windows

If you are using Windows, there are a few more things you need to do.

First, get and install the Python Win32 extensions for Python 2.4.

If you intend to compile Zope yourself, rather than using a binary installer, or if you ever need to compile an egg with C extensions, you will need the mingw32 compiler. Make sure you choose the "base" and "make" modules at a minimum when the installer asks. By default, this installs into C:\MingW32. Inside the installation directory, there will be a bin directory, e.g. C:\MingW32\bin. Add this to your system PATH.

Finally, you need to configure Python's distutils package to use the mingw32 compiler. Create a file called distutils.cfg in the directory C:\Python24\Lib\distutils (presuming Python was installed in C:\Python24, as is the default). Edit this with Notepad, and add the following:

[build]
compiler=mingw32