PEAK Release 0.5 alpha 4

Copyright (C) 1996-2004 by Phillip J. Eby and Tyler C. Sarna. All rights reserved. This software may be used under the same terms as Zope or Python. THERE ARE ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND. Code quality varies between modules, from "beta" to "experimental pre-alpha". :)

Package Description

PEAK is the "Python Enterprise Application Kit". If you develop "enterprise" applications with Python, or indeed almost any sort of application with Python, PEAK may help you do it faster, easier, on a larger scale, and with fewer defects than ever before. The key is component-based development, on a reliable infrastructure.

PEAK tools can be used with other "Python Enterprise" frameworks such as Zope, Twisted, and the Python DBAPI to construct web-based, GUI, or command-line applications, interacting with any kind of storage, or with no storage at all. Whatever the application type, PEAK can help you put it together.

Package Features

Far too many to list even briefly here: see FEATURES.txt for a very high level overview.

Known Issues and Risks of this Version

This is ALPHA software. Although much of the system is extensively tested by a battery of automated tests, it may contain bugs, especially in areas not covered by the test suites. Also, many system interfaces are still subject to change.

PEAK includes early copies of Zope X3's ZConfig and persistence packages, which have had - and may continue to have - significant implementation changes. We will be tracking Zope X3 periodically, but can't guarantee compatibility with arbitrary (e.g. CVS) versions of Zope X3.

Documentation at present is limited, and scattered. The principal documentation is an API reference generated from the code's lengthy docstrings (which usually contain motivating examples for using that class, method, or function). The mailing list and its archives provide a wealth of information on actual usage scenarios, recommended approaches, etc. There is also the beginnings of a tutorial on using the component binding package.

Third-Party Software Included with PEAK

All third-party software included with PEAK are understood by PEAK's authors to be distributable under terms comparable to those PEAK is offered under. However, it is up to you to understand any obligations those licenses may impose upon you. For your reference, here are the third-party packages and where to find their license terms:

The included pyexpat, doctest, optparse, and textwrap modules in peak.util are from Python 2.4, and are included for backward compatibility in Python 2.2 and 2.3. See the Python license for license details.

The expat XML parser is Copyright (c) 1998, 1999, 2000 Thai Open Source Software Center Ltd and Clark Cooper, and Copyright (c) 2001, 2002, 2003 Expat maintainers. See the COPYING file in src/expat for details of its license.

Installation Instructions

Please see the INSTALL.txt file.