As of version 3.0, zopeskel is no longer a package of its own. All the templates that make it work have been moved into packages in the templer namespace. Some of the templates you may be expecting are no longer available. If you require older templates, please be sure to install ZopeSkel<3.0

ZopeSkel provides a collection of project templates for Plone and Zope development projects.

ZopeSkel uses the paster Python library internally.

ZopeSkel can be installed in one of two ways: with buildout or with virtualenv.

Here are instructions how to include ZopeSkel as a part of your local buildout.cfg.

• You can use zopeskel to add new projects to your buildout src/ folder.

Add to your buildout.cfg:

parts =
   ...
   zopeskel

[zopeskel]
# installs paster and Zopeskel
recipe = zc.recipe.egg
eggs =
   PasteScript
   ZopeSkel

After re-running buildout, you will have zopeskel and paster commands in the bin directory of your buildout.

First, install virtualenv into your system:

easy_install virtualenv

Next, create a virtual environment with the new virtualenv command:

virtualenv --no-site-packages --distribute zopeskelenv

Once virtualenv is finished, you can install zopeskel to your new virtual environment:

zopeskelenv/bin/easy_install zopeskel

Once this is complete, you will be left with zopeskel and paster commands in the bin directory inside your virtualenv.

To see details of the available templates:

zopeskel --list

More info about how zopeskel works:

zopeskel --help

Creating a package using virtualenv ZopeSkel installation:

source zopeskelenv/bin/activate
zopeskel <template_name> <package_name>

The folder created (<package_name>) can be checked in to the versioning system of your choice.

Local commands are available for the plone_basic and archetype package templates. If you create a package using one of these templates you will be provided with information about the presence of local commands.

To run a local command and add further features to your package, you will run the paster command add from within your package. Your current working directory must be at or inside the directory where you find your package's egg-info, so you can do the following:

$ bin/templer plone_basic my.package
....
$ cd my.package/src
$ ../../bin/paster --help
...
Templer local commands:
  add  Allows the addition of further templates to an existing package
$ ../../bin/paster add --list
browserlayer:  A Plone browserlayer
browserview:   A browser view skeleton
$ ../../bin/paster add browserlayer
...

If you wish to contribute to the zopeskel project we welcome your contribution. Zopeskel is now distributed with its own built-in buildout, so to begin, all you need to do is check out the source, bootstrap with your desired version of python, and run bin/buildout.

Since all of the template that are provided by ZopeSkel are now in templer namespace packages, the ZopeSkel package uses mr.developer to provide access to all the templer packages required in the src directory of the buildout. Development should take place in those packages. There should be no templates in the ZopeSkel package at all.

To get started, simply clone the zopeskel repository to your local machine, bootstrap with your preferred python, and run the buildout:

git clone [email protected]:collective/ZopeSkel.git zopeskel
cd zopeskel
python2.6 bootstrap.py
...
bin/buildout

Since version 1.5, ZopeSkel has tests. It's required to run these before you check in any changes you make. You should run the full test suite in both Python 2.4 and Python 2.6, as both versions are in common use among Zope and Plone developers. They can be run like so:

bin/test

Please ensure that all tests pass in Python 2.4 and Python 2.6 before making any checkins to any templer package used by zopeskel.

There are a number of open issues in the queue at http://plone.org/products/zopeskel/issues and your help is always welcome in closing any you feel competent to take on. Please note that there is a zopeskel mailing list, so if you have any questions about your approach to fixing a bug, you should post to the list first.

Issue tracker

• http://plone.org/products/zopeskel/issues

Source code

• https://github.com/collective/zopeskel

Mailing List

• https://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/plone-zopeskel

Please contribute by submitting patches for what you consider 'best of breed' file layouts for starting Zope and Plone projects.