Buildout recipe for a hierarchy of parts.

Question

Is there a Python buildout recipe which would allow the following:

[buildout]
parts = group-of-parts

[group-of-parts]
recipe = what.can.i.use.for.this
parts = part-1 part-2

[part-1]
...

[part-2]
...

In other words, I want a recipe which takes a 'parts' attribute much like 'buildout' section does so I can manually manage a hierarchy of groups of parts.

Yes, I know that I could do:

[buildout]
parts = group-of-parts

[group-of-parts]
recipe =
parts = ${part-1:recipe} ${part-2:recipe}

[part-1]
...

[part-2]
...

but relying on the side effect that the parts will be built by referencing an attribute of them seems a bit obscure. I would rather it be more explicit by using a recipe which would just allow the name of the part itself to be listed.

Certainly when extending and overriding, it looks a lot cleaner to say:

[groups-of-parts]
parts -= part-2

than:

[groups-of-parts]
parts -= ${part-2:recipe}

Or is my problem that I am just missing something fundamental about how buildout works, or just overlooking something in the documentation which makes this much cleaner.

And no I don't want to have a flat hierarchy where all parts are listed in the 'parts' attribute of the 'buildout' section.

Answer 1

No, there is no hierarchy, although you could build a recipe for it, of course.

Why do you want it? It's not like you end up with hundreds of parts so it's hard to keep track of them...