The flexible nature of the Python programming language supports multiple programming philosophies, including procedural, object-oriented, and functional. But most importantly, programming in Python is fun. The language supports rather than hinders the development process.

I'm experimenting with eggification of CPS, trying to have support in place for the upcoming CPS 3.4.0 release. I already have something basic working, here is how to test it:

1. Create a fresh Zope 2.8.4 instance (with Python 2.4).
2. Download the Basket product from http://www.plope.com/software/Basket/Basket (I have tested with version 0.2)
3. Download the CPS egg from http://www.cps-project.org/static/eggs/
4. Create a lib/python directory in your instance, and put the egg there
5. Start Zope and play with CPS

1. If it doesn't work, you may checkout CPS3 from SVN from http://svn.nuxeo.org/pub/CPS3/trunk and, type 'make' then 'make egg' and hack the setup.py until your egg is working (well that's how I did it anyway). Then send me the patch or commit your changes if you have SVN access.
   
2. The big egg will be broken into smaller eggs. I fact, that is the main reasons to have eggs in the first place, because currently the installation procedure is not simpler that with the normal tarball.
   
3. I hope the Basket product will be integrated soon into Zope, though I understand it's already too late for Zope 2.9.

BTW: kudos to chrism for the Basket product!

Don't believe the hype, just ask Google:

• "cps ECM": 98800 results
• "zope ECM": 91300 results
• "nuxeo ECM": 55700 results
• "plone ECM": 33500 results
• "alfresco ECM": 25800 results

Added later: for more serious arguments, see Eric's blog entry on the same subject.

Next CPS bugday will happen on IRC channel #cps next wednesday (dec 14). There are still 77 issues left before we release CPS 3.4.0, but we are confident that the number will drop to a less spectacular level with the help of the CPS developers community at large, and the dedication of the CPS core team.

For more info on CPS development:

• The cps-devel mailing list.
• The Trac (with SVN browsing, timelines, roadmap and outstanding issues).
• The #cps IRC channel on freenode.net.

Here is the announcement on Freshmeat:

New command-line options have been added for looping on specific pages inside a given script, for ignoring image/CSS link errors, for filtering tests based on a regular expression, for stopping the tests on the first failure, and more. Reporting has been improved. The API has been cleaned up a bit. ez_setup has been upgraded to fix broken SourceForge download.

More info...

Some links to useful Python propaganda:

• Benefits of Python at Wingware
• Python for Lisp Programmers by Google's chief scientist, Peter Norvig
• Conversation with Bruce Eckel at Artima, see this blog by Kevin Altis
• What is Python? and Why Python? by Kevin Altis (with more links)

Philipp von Weitershausen, one of the heavyweights of the Zope3 development team, now has a blog on z3lab, the community site for the project aiming at building the next-generation Open Source ECM Platform.