Quick intro

• Install as described in INSTALL.txt

• Run instancemanager once to create a .instancemanager directory in ~

• Edit userdefaults.py in ~ for only the common basis for all your sites (example, Zope path, default admin and password for new sites)

• Copy userdefaults.py in ~ to <project>.py (typically "customername.py") and customize (override) for that project (port, plone site name, products, etc.)

• Now this will do the full setup for your site. ONLY do it when you want a TOTALLY fresh start:

  instancemanager fresh <project>    # NOT <project>.py - 
  

• to stop zope:

  instancemanager -z stop <project> 
  

• to start in foreground:

  instancemanager -z fg <project> 
  

• to reinstall products:

  instancemanager --products <project> 
  

  or, if you want to make sure everything's OK:

  instancemanager --products --manifest <project> 
  

  The last gets you a (wide) manifest that can help diagnose product version issues and collisions from bundles.

More details below.

Details

Setting up a zope instance, symlinking to all the products, extracting product tarballs, copying over a snapshot Data.fs from the customer's website, restarting zope, clicking around in the quickinstaller: it can all be done by hand.

Instancemanager is a handy utility program that manages your development zope instances:

• Creates clean, fresh instances in your standard location.
• Copies over a prepared Data.fs if desired.
• Makes products available in the 'Products/' directory from a variety of sources (.tgz, .tgz bundles, svn, symlinking).
• Restarts your zope and reinstalls your products.
• Does the Data.fs copy, the product availability and the reinstall in one step, giving you a real fresh instance without leftover junk.
• Make backups and restores of the instance database to a directory. By default backups are stored in ~/backups/<project> which will be created if it doesn't exist. You can also set how many full backup you want to keep. Older backups will automatically be deleted to reduce disk usage.

If you're the kind of good developers that's also a lazy developer, you don't want to do this repetitive stuff by hand. That's where the instance manager jumps in. 'instancemanager --create yourproject' creates an instance in your default location. 'instancemanager fresh yourproject ' gives you a freshly prepared products directory, a freshly copied pre-made Data.fs (if you've got one) and it presses the quickinstaller buttons you want pressed.

For instance, individual product sources can be:

• A '.tgz' file (like FCKeditor or qGoogleSitemaps).
• A '.tgz' bundle (like plone or ploneformmailer).
• A symlink (most probably to an svn directory, for instance your current customer development product).
• A symlink to a bundle directory (most probably an svn bundle, for instance the latest plone 2.5).

Configuration is handled in a layered manner. Instancemanager has its own defaults. You can overwrite these global defaults locally ("I always store my instances in my homedir instead of '~/instances/'"). And there's an per-project config file where you can list exceptions. And of course the passwords and desired products and so.

If you specify the ID of your plone root ('plone_site_name'), the instancemanager attempts a quick-reinstall of your products when running the "fresh" or "soft" targets. Real handy during development. It even migrates plone to a newer version when needed. I'm able to migrate http://vanrees.org/ from a plone 2.1 website to plone 2.5, including migration, with just a call to 'instancemanager fresh vanrees '. And it updates a couple of other products too, while it's at it. This removes the need for much by-hand action when testing migrations or when doing installer updates on your product.

When you have specified a plone_site_name and a PloneSite of that name does not exist yet, instancemanager tries to create that. Works for plone 2.1 and 2.5. It has some oddities still though. When the script has run for the first time, a 'bin/zopectl status' cannot find the zope process, though it is running. Shutting it down via the Control Panel and then restarting it from the command line seems the best option here. Some testing is needed to improve this. Upon trying again after minor changes it seems to work fine actually. Still: consider this experimental, so: start experimenting. :)

Usage

Usage:

Usage: instancemanager [options] [multi-action] <project>
multi-action: default ones are 'fresh' and 'soft'.

options:
  --version             show program's version number and exit
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -v, --verbose         Show all logging messages.
  -q, --quiet           Only show error messages.
  -m, --manifest        Print Manifest of installed Products and collisions
  --activate            Print workingenv activation command
  -b, --backup          Backup the instance database (incremental backup).
  --changeown           Action that changes ownership of some documents.
  --copydatafs          Copy over a fresh, prepared, 'Data.fs'.
  --create              Create a zope instance for your project.
  --pack                Action that packs your database.
  --printconfig         Print the configuration for this project.
  --products            Rebuild the Products/ directory .
  -r, --reinstall       Action that quickreinstalls your products.
  --repozo=REPOZO       Other backup/restore tasks with repozo.
  --restore             Restore the database from the regular backup.
  --restore-date=DATE   Restore situation at DATE from regular backup.
  --rewriterule         Print out an apache rewriterule.
  --runcommand          Run external command.
  -t PRD, --test=PRD    Runs tests for product PRD (use MAIN for main
                        products).
  -u CMD, --uninstall=CMD
                        Action that uninstalls a given product
  --updatesources       Update the working-copies of all sources.
  --upgradezope         Update the zope.conf used for your instance
  --zeo=CMD             Runs your zeo server's 'bin/zeoctl CMD'.
  -z CMD, --zope=CMD    Runs your instance's 'bin/zopectl CMD'.