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This chapter describes the architecture of Plone's packages and dependencies.	This chapter describes the architecture of Plone's packages and dependencies.	Architecture: packages and dependecies	Architecture, packages, dependecies, Plone

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

Borders

As a rough base mental model for how Plone is organized in Plone 6.1, there are two packages as dividing lines:

Products.CMFPlone and all below defines the Plone core. Everything in here depends on the plone.base.
plone.base as the border to the Application Server and Content Management Framework and its dependencies

block-beta
    columns 4
    Plone["Plone<br/>integraton of all in one release"]:4
    Distributions
    Upgrade
    coreapis["Core APIs"]
    coreaddons["Core add-ons"]
    cmfplone["Products.CMFPlone"]:4
    ploneapp["Most of plone.app.* namespace"]:2
    otherlay["Various related packages"]:2
    plonebase["plone.base"]:4
    block:groupfoundation:4
        zopecore["Zope core/ ZCA"]
        zopeeco["Zope ecosystem"]
        cmfcore["CMFCore"]
        ploneworld["Plone generic libraries"]
        libraries["Other libraries"]
    end  
    style cmfplone fill:#fff9e6
    style plonebase fill:#fff9e6

Main components

Some explanation on the mental model

Foundation:
- Zope core and its dependencies is the application server,
- the Zope component architecture (ZCA) framework and
- some additional packages from the wider Zope ecosystem.
- then there are generic, standalone Plone libraries,
- plus various other Python libraries.
Products.CMFCore provides on top of Zope very basic content management features we rely on.
plone.base defines several interfaces as contracts for the component architecture we build on. Additional it provides some base classes and utility functions we use often. It also depends on Products.CMFCore and so Zope. Additional it depends on generic functionality like plone.dexterity, plone.behavior and plone.registry.
The space of plenty plone.*, plone.app.* and related libraries defines the core of Plone.
On top of this core, depending on these packages, is Products.CMFPlone which is the package to depend on if the basic Plone core is referenced.
On top of Products.CMFPlone
- are the core APIs like plone.api and plone.restapi,
- there is the distribution support plone.distribution and specific distributions, currently plone.volto, plone.classicui,
- are core addons like Working Copy Support (plone.app.iterate), discussion support (plone.app.discussion), ...
- is plone.app.upgrade, the package to upgrade between Plone version.
The package Plone is the package to depend on if you want to depend on the whole Plone with everything. This meta package without any code depends on all other packages. It is what you want to install if you do not want to care about the details with all batteries included.

The space on top of CMFPlone

Add-on developers and integrators are primary interacting with the dependencies on top of CMFPlone. The following diagram visualizes this part.

---
config:
  sankey:
    showValues: false
    width: 1600
    height: 800
    nodeAlignment: "right"
---

sankey-beta

    Plone,Distributions,100

    Distributions,plone.volto,50
    Distributions,plone.classicui,30
    Distributions,other dist.,20



    plone.volto,plone.distribution,10
    plone.volto,plone.restapi,20
    plone.volto,plone.api,20

    Multlilingual,plone.api,20
    Commenting,plone.api,20
    Working Copies,plone.api, 20
    Caching,plone.api,20

    plone.classicui,plone.distribution,15
    plone.classicui,plone.api,15
    other dist.,plone.distribution,4
    other dist.,plone.api,8
    other dist.,plone.restapi,8


    Plone,Core-Addons,80

    Core-Addons,Multlilingual,20
    Core-Addons,Commenting,20
    Core-Addons,Working Copies,20
    Core-Addons,Caching,20

    plone.distribution,Export/Import,15
    plone.distribution,plone.api,14
    plone.restapi,Core,20
    Export/Import,plone.api,8
    plone.restapi,plone.api,15
    Export/Import,plone.restapi,7
    Upgrade,Core,20
    plone.api,Core,160

    Plone,Upgrade,20

A more detailed view on the architecture

A more detailed view on the whole architecture is sketched here:

flowchart TB
 subgraph Release["Release"]
        Plone[["'Plone' Package"]]
  end
 subgraph subGraph1["Distributions"]
        volto{{"plone.volto"}}
        classicui{{"plone.classicui"}}
        other{{"other ..."}}
  end
 subgraph Core-Addons["Core-Addons"]
        multilingual("Multilingual")
        iterate("Working Copies")
        discussion("Commenting")
        caching("Caching")
  end
 subgraph API["API"]
        restapi("RestAPI")
        ploneapi("API")
        upgrade("Upgrade")
        exportimport("Export/Import")
        distribution["Distribution"]
  end
 subgraph subGraph4["The Inner Core"]
        thecore((("Core-Features: plone.*, ...")))
  end
 subgraph Core["Core"]
        cmfplone["Products.CMFPlone"]
        plonebase["plone.base"]
        subGraph4
  end
 subgraph Foundations["Foundations"]
        zope["Zope/CMF/ZODB/..."]
        supportlibs["Several Supporting Libraries"]
  end
    Plone == provides ==> volto
    Plone -. provides .-> classicui & other & upgrade & multilingual & iterate & discussion & caching
    volto -- installs --> restapi
    volto == is a ==> distribution
    classicui -. is a .-> distribution
    other -. is a .-> distribution
    distribution -- uses --> exportimport
    distribution == depends on ==> ploneapi
    restapi -- depends on --> ploneapi
    cmfplone == depends on ==> thecore
    thecore == depends on ==> plonebase
    plonebase == depends on ==> zope
    plonebase -- depends on --> supportlibs
    zope -- depends on --> supportlibs
    ploneapi == depends on ==> cmfplone
    upgrade -- depends on --> cmfplone
    multilingual -- depends on --> ploneapi
    iterate -- depends on --> ploneapi
    discussion -- depends on --> ploneapi
    caching -- depends on --> ploneapi
    exportimport -- uses serializers of --> restapi
    exportimport -- depends on --> ploneapi

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

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Architecture: packages and dependecies

Motivation

Overview

Mental model

Borders

Main components

The space on top of CMFPlone

A more detailed view on the architecture

Packages in detail

Above `Products.CMFPlone`

Between `Products.CMFPlone` and `plone.base`

The foundation below `plone.base`

Plone world

Zope ecosystem

Zope core

Libraries

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Architecture: packages and dependecies

Motivation

Overview

Mental model

Borders

Main components

The space on top of CMFPlone

A more detailed view on the architecture

Packages in detail

Above Products.CMFPlone

Between Products.CMFPlone and plone.base

The foundation below plone.base

Plone world

Zope ecosystem

Zope core

Libraries

Above `Products.CMFPlone`

Between `Products.CMFPlone` and `plone.base`

The foundation below `plone.base`