Why can't I import this Zope component in a Python 2.4 virtualenv?

Question

I'm trying to install Plone 3.3rc4 with plone.app.blob and repoze but nothing I've tried has worked so far. For one attempt I've pip-installed repoze.zope2, Plone, and plone.app.blob into a virtualenv. I have this version of DocumentTemplate in the virtualenv's site-packages directory and I'm trying to get it running in RHEL5.

For some reason when I try to run paster serve etc/zope2.ini in this environment way Python gives the message ImportError: No module named DT_Util? DT_Util.py exists in the directory, __init__.py is there too, and the C module it depends on is there. I suspect there's some circular dependency or failure when importing the C extension. Of course this module would work in a normal Zope install...

>>> import DocumentTemplate
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
  File "DocumentTemplate/__init__.py", line 21, in ?
  File ".../lib/python2.4/site-packages/DocumentTemplate/DocumentTemplate.py", line 112, in ?
    from DT_String import String, File
  File ".../lib/python2.4/site-packages/DocumentTemplate/DT_String.py", line 19, in ?
    from DocumentTemplate.DT_Util import ParseError, InstanceDict
ImportError: No module named DT_Util

Answer 1

I must say I doubt DocumentTemplate from Zope will work standalone. You are welcome to try though. :-)

Note that DT_Util imports C extensions:

from DocumentTemplate.cDocumentTemplate import InstanceDict, TemplateDict
from DocumentTemplate.cDocumentTemplate import render_blocks, safe_callable
from DocumentTemplate.cDocumentTemplate import join_unicode

You'll need to make sure those are compiled. My guess is that importing the cDocumentTemplate module fails and thus the import of DT_Util fails.

Answer 2

Well..

1. Why?
2. How did you install it?
3. Have you tried zope.documenttemplate ?