Architecture: packages and dependecies#

This chapter describes the architecture of Plone's packages and dependencies.

Motivation#

Over the years, Plone has developed many indirections in its packages and dependencies. The goal in the long run is to untangle them and get a simple dependency graph. This document shows the current state, as an orientation to its architecture.

Overview#

There are multiple level of dependencies:

  • package level (setup.py/setup.cfg/pyproject.toml)

  • Python level (imports)

  • ZCML level (includes)

  • testing (need for layers, such as functional testing)

Circular dependencies at the package level have now been resolved.

Nevertheless there is indirection on all other levels. Since Plone consists of a lot of packages, it is complex to untangle those.

Mental model#

A base mental model for how Plone is organized in Plone 6, and is shown in the following diagram:

block-beta columns 1 Plone["Plone <br/>the integraton of both distributions in one release"] space Distributions block:dist plone.volto plone.classicui end space block:core coreaddons["Core add-ons"] coreapi["Core APIs"] end space cmfplone["Products.CMFPlone"] space:2 block:layer ploneapp["Most of plone.app.* namespace"] otherlay["Various other packages"] end space plonebase["plone.base"] space foundations["The Foundations"] space:3 block:foundationcomponents ploneworld["Plone world"] zopeeco["Zope ecosystem"] zopecore["Zope core"] libraries["Libraries"] end Plone --> Distributions dist --> core cmfplone --> layer core --> cmfplone layer --> plonebase plonebase --> foundations style cmfplone fill:#ff0 style plonebase fill:#ff0

As a rough model, there are two packages as dividing lines:

  1. Products.CMFPlone

  2. plone.base

Packages in detail#

Looking deeper into those packages, there are more sub-divisions, but first we place them into three groups:

Above Products.CMFPlone#

  • Plone

  • plone.api

  • plone.app.iterate

  • plone.app.upgrade

  • plone.restapi

  • plone.volto

  • Products.CMFPlacefulWorkflow

Between Products.CMFPlone and plone.base#

  • collective.monkeypatcher

  • plone.app.caching

  • plone.app.content

  • plone.app.contentlisting

  • plone.app.contentmenu

  • plone.app.contentrules

  • plone.app.contenttypes

  • plone.app.customerize

  • plone.app.dexterity

  • plone.app.discussion

  • plone.app.event

  • plone.app.i18n

  • plone.app.intid

  • plone.app.layout

  • plone.app.linkintegrity

  • plone.app.locales

  • plone.app.lockingbehavior

  • plone.app.multilingual

  • plone.app.portlets

  • plone.app.querystring

  • plone.app.redirector

  • plone.app.registry

  • plone.app.relationfield

  • plone.app.textfield

  • plone.app.theming

  • plone.app.users

  • plone.app.uuid

  • plone.app.versioningbehavior

  • plone.app.viewletmanager

  • plone.app.vocabularies

  • plone.app.widgets

  • plone.app.workflow

  • plone.app.z3cform

  • plone.browserlayer

  • plone.cachepurging

  • plone.contentrules

  • plone.formwidget.namedfile

  • plone.formwidget.recurrence

  • plone.i18n

  • plone.namedfile

  • plone.outputfilters

  • plone.portlet.collection

  • plone.portlet.static

  • plone.portlets

  • plone.protect

  • plone.resourceeditor

  • plone.rfc822

  • plone.schemaeditor

  • plone.session

  • plone.staticresources

  • plone.stringinterp

  • plone.theme

  • plonetheme.barceloneta

  • Products.isurlinportal

The foundation below plone.base#

Plone world#

  • borg.localrole

  • plone.alterego

  • plone.autoform

  • plone.autoinclude

  • plone.batching

  • plone.behavior

  • plone.caching

  • plone.dexterity

  • plone.event

  • plone.folder

  • plone.indexer

  • plone.intelligenttext

  • plone.keyring

  • plone.locking

  • plone.memoize

  • plone.registry

  • plone.resource

  • plone.rest

  • plone.scale

  • plone.schema

  • plone.subrequest

  • plone.supermodel

  • plone.transformchain

  • plone.uuid

  • plone.z3cform

  • Products.DateRecurringIndex

  • Products.ExtendedPathIndex

  • Products.MimetypesRegistry

  • Products.PlonePAS

  • Products.PortalTransforms

  • Products.statusmessages

Zope ecosystem#

  • Chameleon

  • diazo

  • five.customerize

  • five.intid

  • five.localsitemanager

  • icalendar

  • Products.CMFCore

  • Products.CMFDiffTool

  • Products.CMFDynamicViewFTI

  • Products.CMFEditions

  • Products.CMFUid

  • Products.DCWorkflow

  • Products.ExternalMethod

  • Products.GenericSetup

  • Products.MailHost

  • Products.PluggableAuthService

  • Products.PluginRegistry

  • Products.PythonScripts

  • Products.Sessions

  • Products.SiteErrorLog

  • Products.StandardCacheManagers

  • Products.ZopeVersionControl

  • repoze.xmliter

  • webresource

  • z3c.caching

  • z3c.form

  • z3c.formwidget.query

  • z3c.objpath

  • z3c.pt

  • z3c.relationfield

  • z3c.zcmlhook

  • zc.recipe.egg

  • zc.relation

  • zodbverify

  • zope.copy

  • zope.intid

  • zope.keyreference

Zope core#

  • AccessControl

  • Acquisition

  • AuthEncoding

  • beautifulsoup4

  • BTrees

  • DateTime

  • DocumentTemplate

  • ExtensionClass

  • Missing

  • MultiMapping

  • Persistence

  • persistent

  • Products.BTreeFolder2

  • Products.ZCatalog

  • Record

  • RestrictedPython

  • transaction

  • zc.lockfile

  • ZConfig

  • zdaemon

  • ZEO

  • zExceptions

  • ZODB

  • ZODB3

  • zodbpickle

  • Zope

  • zope.annotation

  • zope.app.locales

  • zope.browser

  • zope.browsermenu

  • zope.browserpage

  • zope.browserresource

  • zope.cachedescriptors

  • zope.component

  • zope.componentvocabulary

  • zope.configuration

  • zope.container

  • zope.contentprovider

  • zope.contenttype

  • zope.datetime

  • zope.deferredimport

  • zope.deprecation

  • zope.dottedname

  • zope.event

  • zope.exceptions

  • zope.filerepresentation

  • zope.globalrequest

  • zope.hookable

  • zope.i18n

  • zope.i18nmessageid

  • zope.interface

  • zope.lifecycleevent

  • zope.location

  • zope.pagetemplate

  • zope.processlifetime

  • zope.proxy

  • zope.ptresource

  • zope.publisher

  • zope.ramcache

  • zope.schema

  • zope.security

  • zope.sendmail

  • zope.sequencesort

  • zope.site

  • zope.size

  • zope.structuredtext

  • zope.tal

  • zope.tales

  • zope.testbrowser

  • zope.testing

  • zope.traversing

  • zope.viewlet

  • Zope2

Libraries#

  • attrs

  • cffi

  • cssselect

  • decorator

  • docutils

  • feedparser

  • future

  • importlib_metadata

  • jsonschema

  • Markdown

  • multipart

  • Paste

  • PasteDeploy

  • piexif

  • Pillow

  • pycparser

  • PyJWT

  • pyrsistent

  • python_dotenv

  • python_gettext

  • requests

  • roman

  • sgmllib3k

  • simplejson

  • soupsieve

  • Unidecode

  • urllib3

  • waitress

  • WebOb

  • WebTest

  • WSGIProxy2

  • zipp