Dexterity Development Quickstart using zopeskel.dexterity

Update:  You will probably make more progress using this: https://github.com/pigeonflight/stack-python-plone I've blogged about Plone on Dotcloud here.

These are my notes for getting started quickly with dexterity and zopeskel.dexterity.

Rule Number One: Use Unix
This is about getting started quickly. At this time, Windows will slow you down, do this on a server or something, this issue may change in the future at which point I will be able to recommend otherwise, but for now, for the sake of your sanity just use OS X or Linux for development.

Rule Number Two: Use the Unified Installer
The Unified Installer (usually available at http://plone.org/download) provides all the tools you need to get started, everything here assumes that you have successfully installed Plone via the Unified Installer on your platform.

Rule Number Three: 
Install your app and run buildout BEFORE attempting to use localcommands. This is important because additional "goodness" is added to your new package when it is properly installed to your instance.

Step 1 - Install via the UnifiedInstaller then edit the base.cfg and add zopeskel.dexterity and ZopeSkel <= 2.99.

eggs =
    PasteScript 

    ZopeSkel <= 2.99

             zopeskel.dexterity

Then re-run buildout 

    bin/buildout

 Step 2 - Create your first product

cd src
../bin/zopeskel dexterity my.app

WARNING: localcommands like "addcontent" WILL NOT WORK until you install the app and run buildout!

Step 3 - Install your app by adding it to the buildout.cfg and re-run buildout

Add the following lines to your buildout.cfg

eggs =  

        my.app 

develop =

                 src/my.app

or if you prefer to use mr.developer do something like this:

extensions = mr.developer
auto-checkout = my.app
....
[sources]
my.app = fs  my.app

The re-run buildout

bin/buildout

Step 4 - Add your first contenttype
Note that all localcommands are run from within your new app

cd src/my.app
../../bin/paster addcontent dexterity_content 

You should now be able to follow the instructions at: http://collective-docs.readthedocs.org/en/latest/content/dexterity.html

If you want to know what localcommands are available try running

../../bin/paster addcontent -l

Activate your new Add-on
To see if everything is working launch your instance and visit Site Setup > Add-ons, you should now be able to activate your new add-on.

In the screenshot below, I have already created a content type for my add-on, so after activation I can use the green content bar in my site to add a new example type.