[Product-Developers] How to import catalog.xml without emptying the indexes

[Giovanni Toffoli]

Hi,

I've almost completed the port of a product from Plone 2.1 to Plone 3.1.
I've got much help from
- generating a fresh product core with archgenxml 2.3
- reading again and again the book of Martin Aspeli
- looking at CMFPlone and other products.

I was able to move much stuff from AppInstall.py (an extension to 
Extensions/Install.py) to genericsetup declarative modules.
Now I've realized that the indexes defined in catalog.xml are generated 
empty at each install or reinstall.
By googling I've found a relevant post at
  http://markmail.org/message/m5a3zdbccuoqg7zd
from which I quote the answer of Maurits van Rees (Mar 30, 2008):
<< .. a reinstall in the quick installer will give you an empty index. So I 
do that in setuphandlers.py now. >>

Two questions:
1.
Anybody knows if during the last months the way genericsetup handles the 
index definitions has been improved, possibly by implementing some "keep" or 
"purge" attribute ?
(see also the extensive discussion by Maurits van Rees at 
http://mail.zope.org/pipermail/zope-cmf/2007-March/025664.html )
2.
It is possible to know whether setuphandlers.py, is is being executed as 
result of an "install" or of a "reinstall" action ?

Thank you in advance, Giovanni Toffoli