Installing Zope

This document describes installing Zope with zc.buildout (the recommended method) or via pip.

Prerequisites

In order to install Zope, you must have the following prerequisites available:

  • A supported version of Python, including the development support if installed from system-level packages. Supported versions include 3.7 up to 3.11.

  • Zope needs the Python zlib module to be importable. If you are building your own Python from source, please be sure that you have the headers installed which correspond to your system’s zlib.

  • A C compiler capable of building extension modules for your Python (gcc recommended).

  • If you are using a Python interpreter shipping with your Linux distribution, you need to install the matching Python development package. As example, for Python 3 on Ubuntu 18.04, you have to type the following:

    $ sudo apt-get install python3-dev
    

Choice of installation methods

Zope can be installed using either straight pip or the zc.buildout buildout and deployment tool.

You can use pip and the built-in script mkwsgiinstance for testing or very simple setups that don’t require much customization or scripting. It will create a basic set of configurations and a simple start/stop script.

If you need customization and if you don’t want to maintain configurations and scripts by hand you should use zc.buildout in conjunction with the buildout add-on plone.recipe.zope2instance instead. This is a powerful combination for creating repeatable builds for a given configuration and environment. The Zope developers use zc.buildout to develop Zope itself as well as the dependency packages it uses. This is the recommended way of installing Zope.

Installing Zope with zc.buildout

Installing the Zope software using zc.buildout involves the following steps:

  • Create a virtual environment

  • Install zc.buildout into the virtual environment

  • Create a buildout configuration file buildout.cfg

  • Run the buildout

The following examples are from Linux and use Zope version 5.0. Just replace that version number with your desired version.

$ python3.10 -m venv zope
$ cd zope
<create buildout.cfg in this folder, see examples below>
$ bin/pip install -U pip wheel zc.buildout
$ bin/buildout

Using the simplest possible configuration

Here’s a minimum buildout.cfg configuration example that will create the built-in bin/mkwsgiinstance script to create a Zope instance:

[buildout]
extends =
    https://zopefoundation.github.io/Zope/releases/5.0/versions-prod.cfg
parts =
    zopescripts

[zopescripts]
recipe = zc.recipe.egg
interpreter = zopepy
eggs =
    Zope
    Paste

Using plone.recipe.zope2instance

To make your life a lot easier, you can use plone.recipe.zope2instance to automate a lot of the configuration tasks from the following document, Configuring and Running Zope. plone.recipe.zope2instance has a myriad configuration options, please see the PyPI page.

[buildout]
extends =
    https://zopefoundation.github.io/Zope/releases/5.0/versions-prod.cfg
parts =
    zopeinstance

[zopeinstance]
recipe = plone.recipe.zope2instance
eggs =
user = admin:adminpassword
http-address = 8080
zodb-temporary-storage = off

One feature this kind of installation offers is the easy integration of WSGI servers other than the built-in waitress. You can specify a file path to a WSGI configuration file to use when starting the Zope instance. This works for WSGI servers that offer a PasteDeply-compatible entry point, like gunicorn. You will need to create the .ini file yourself, and don’t forget to include the WSGI server software egg in the eggs specification:

[zopeinstance]
recipe = plone.recipe.zope2instance
eggs =
    gunicorn
user = admin:adminpassword
http-address = 8080
zodb-temporary-storage = off
wsgi = /path/to/zope.ini

Installing Zope with pip

Installing the Zope software using pip involves the following steps:

  • Create a virtual environment (There is no need to activate it.)

  • Install Zope and its dependencies

Example steps on Linux. Replace the version number “5.0” with the latest version you find on https://zopefoundation.github.io/Zope/:

$ python3.10 -m venv zope
$ cd zope
$ bin/pip install -U pip wheel
$ bin/pip install Zope[wsgi] \
  -c https://zopefoundation.github.io/Zope/releases/5.0/constraints.txt

You can also install Zope using a single requirements file. Note that this installation method might install packages that are not actually needed (i. e. more than are listed in the install_requires section of setup.py):

$ bin/pip install \
-r https://zopefoundation.github.io/Zope/releases/5.0/requirements-full.txt

Building the documentation

You can build the documentation locally. Example steps on Linux. Replace the version number “5.0” with the latest version you find on https://zopefoundation.github.io/Zope/:

$ wget https://pypi.org/packages/source/Z/Zope/Zope-5.0.tar.gz
$ tar xfz Zope-5.0.tar.gz
$ cd Zope-5.0
$ python3.10 -m venv .
$ bin/pip install -U pip wheel
$ bin/pip install Zope[docs] -c ./constraints.txt
$ cd docs
$ make html