[Framework-Team] Re: [plone4] Release process

[Erik Rose]

On Dec 27, 2008, at 13:31 , Ross Patterson wrote:

> It seems like this this dump format will likely become a point of
> hackability in our software ecosystem.  People out there will find
> interesting things to do with it aside from dump-and-reload.  This  
> would
> be a good thing except we're *expecting* the format to be unstable and
> change rapidly.  It seems possible that there would be some ruffled
> feathers out there amongst those who come to depend on such hacks and
> then find that their favorite hack is quickly broken by the next
> release.  As such, it seems like it would be a good idea to dress up  
> the
> dump format in flashing red lights and loud alarms to discourage at
> least the adoption of such hacks if not their creation.

Also, the format, if we go the dump-and-reload route, should be a  
tagged one so at least the *addition* of fields needn't scuttle  
dependents. Something XML-based might be a good choice, with my usual  
proviso that humans must never have to look at it. We could even throw  
a "version" attr into each tag in case we want to change the format of  
the data within. That would let dependents react more gracefully to  
format changes.