Zope 2.12 alpha 1 has been released. It’s completely “eggified”, meaning that all parts of it are separate python modules, installable with setuptools easy_install command. The main egg is called just Zope2, and you can therefore now install Zope 2 with “easy_install Zope2” from the command line. Of course, this will install it in the system library, which is probably not what you want. So you probably want to use virtualenv to create a separate installation, or use buildout.

Here are the commands I used to test this alpha version:

virtualenv zope212 # Create a python sandbox for testing

cd zope212

bin/easy_install Zope2 # Install Zope 2

# make coffee while Zope 2 gets downloaded and installed

bin/mkzopeinstance

cd testinstance # Or whatever you called it

bin/zopectl fg

Yeah, that’s it! Works like a charm. Even on Python 2.6! Zope 2.12 will be released probably around a similar time as Plone 4. Plone 3.2 is already completely eggyfied, but Plone buildouts still need to have special recipies for installing Zope 2. With Zope 2.12 this will no longer be necessary, and you can install Plone just by doing an easy_install Plone, and get all of the parts installed. Which is totally cool!

So thanks to everyone involved in this, and also to everyone involved in eggifying Zope3, without which this never could have happend!