collective.big.bang

Our whole universe was in a hot, dense state
Then nearly fourteen billion years ago expansion started, wait
The earth began to cool, the autotrophs began to drool
Neanderthals developed tools
We built a wall (we built the pyramids)
Math, science, history, unraveling the mysteries
That all started with the big bang! Hey!

So all started with the Plone site! Hey! This package is used to create a Plone site when Zope is started (just before the Ready to handle requests sentence).

You can use environment variables to create the Plone site and choose which packages you would like to install. See "Environment variables".

You can also expand your Plone site by starting automaticaly all pending upgrade steps when database opened.

Why not use collective.recipe.plonesite?

The goal is to create the Plone site when you deploy a new Plone in a containerized environment. We think it's easier to create the Plone site on start-up, without an entrypoint or extra commands. It's simpler in a containerized environment than starting a buildout part to create a Plone site.

Fun fact: This package is now called collective.big.bang instead of the original collective.bigbang, because the name collective.bigbang was rejected by PyPI.

Environment variables

You can add environment variables into your buildout under the instance part using environment-vars:

...
[instance]
...
environment-vars =
    PLONE_EXTENSION_IDS plone.app.caching:default,plonetheme.barceloneta:default
    DEFAULT_LANGUAGE fr
    ADMIN_PASSWORD mysuperpa$$w0rd
    ACTIVE_BIGBANG True
    ACTIVE_BIGBANG_EXPANSION True

Or use tools like direnv (example .envrc file):

export PLONE_EXTENSION_IDS=plone.app.caching:default,plonetheme.barceloneta:default
export DEFAULT_LANGUAGE=fr
export ADMIN_PASSWORD=mysuperpa$$w0rd
export ACTIVE_BIGBANG=True
export ACTIVE_BIGBANG_EXPANSION=True

PLONE_EXTENSION_IDS

A list of GenericSetup profiles to install. Default: plone.app.caching:default,plonetheme.barceloneta:default

DEFAULT_LANGUAGE

The default language of the Plone site. Default: en

ADMIN_PASSWORD

The password for the Zope "admin" user. Note: No default. If not set, the admin password will not be updated.

ACTIVE_BIGBANG

Create a Plone site on this instance. Used to avoid conflict errors; should be True on only one instance. Default: False

ACTIVE_BIGBANG_EXPANSION

Expansion of the Plone universe, it run all pending upgrades. Used to avoid conflict errors; should be True on only one instance. Default: False

Features

• Creates Plone site when Zope is started.
• Run all pending upgrade steps when database is open.
• Run scripts to create sites and run upgrade steps on demand.

Run Scripts

In addition to automatic site creation on startup, collective.big.bang provides run scripts for manual execution. These are useful when you want more control over when sites are created or upgrades are run.

bin/create-site

Creates a Plone site using the modern plone.distribution API, supporting distributions like default, classic, or volto.

Usage:

# Create site with defaults
SITE_ID=Plone DISTRIBUTION=classic ./bin/create-site parts/instance/etc/zope.conf

# Recreate existing site
DELETE_EXISTING=True ./bin/create-site parts/instance/etc/zope.conf

# With additional profiles
PLONE_EXTENSION_IDS="my.addon:default,another.addon:default" ./bin/create-site parts/instance/etc/zope.conf

Environment Variables:

Note: ADDITIONAL_PROFILES is deprecated in favor of PLONE_EXTENSION_IDS. It is still read (with a warning) when PLONE_EXTENSION_IDS is not set; if both are set, PLONE_EXTENSION_IDS wins.

Unlike the startup hook (ACTIVE_BIGBANG), create-site does not notify DarwinStartedEvent.

bin/upgrade-steps

Runs all pending GenericSetup upgrade steps for all installed profiles.

Usage:

# Run upgrade steps on default site
SITE_ID=Plone ./bin/upgrade-steps parts/instance/etc/zope.conf

# Run upgrade steps on specific site
SITE_ID=Plone ./bin/upgrade-steps parts/instance/etc/zope.conf

Environment Variables:

Installation

Install collective.big.bang by adding it to your buildout:

[buildout]

...

eggs +=
    collective.big.bang

...

[instance]
...
environment-vars =
    PLONE_EXTENSION_IDS plone.app.caching:default,plonetheme.barceloneta:default
    DEFAULT_LANGUAGE fr
    ADMIN_PASSWORD mysuperpa$$w0rd
    ACTIVE_BIGBANG True
    ACTIVE_BIGBANG_EXPANSION True

Then run:

bin/buildout

Contribute

• Issue Tracker
• Source Code

Support

If you're having issues, please let us know by opening an issue.

License

The project is licensed under the GPLv2.

Contributors

• Benoît Suttor, benoit.suttor@imio.be
• Laurent Lasudry, laurent.lasudry@affinitic.be
• Olivier Delaere
• Rémi Dubois, remi.dubois@imio.be

Changelog

1.2.3 (2026-10-08)

• create-site script now reads extension profiles from PLONE_EXTENSION_IDS, like the startup hook. ADDITIONAL_PROFILES is deprecated: it is still read (with a warning) when PLONE_EXTENSION_IDS is not set. [remdub]

1.2.2 (2026-08-26)

• Fix upgrade-steps script (and expansion.started) raising TypeError: ('Not enough context information to get parent', None) on upgrade steps that touch local utilities. The site was never registered via zope.component.hooks.setSite() before running upgrade steps, unlike create_plone_site. [bsuttor]

1.2.1 (2026-07-06)

• Make the create-site script idempotent: when the target site already exists (and DELETE_EXISTING is not set), log an info message and exit successfully instead of failing. This lets the Kubernetes create-site Job re-run safely on every deploy without hitting its backoff limit. [bsuttor]

1.2.0 (2026-07-06)

• Add ensure_admin_user() to ensure Zope admin user exists on fresh Data.fs (container environments). [bsuttor]

• Add console script entry points create-site and upgrade-steps. [bsuttor]

• Refactor test suite to use pytest and uv. [bsuttor]

1.1.0 (2025-10-14)

• Added expansion feature, which allows to perform all pending upgrade steps in one operation. [bsuttor]

• Upgrade dev environment to Plone 6.1 [remdub]

1.0.3 (2022-05-13)

• Do not notify DarwinStartedEvent if site doesn't exist. [odelaere]

1.0.2 (2022-05-13)

• Fix mountpoints break bid.bang execution. [odelaere]

1.0.1 (2022-04-15)

• Notify an event after bang. [odelaere]

1.0 (2022-03-01)

• Do not set "admin" password if ADMIN_PASSWORD env variable is not set. [bsuttor]

1.0b2 (2022-01-27)

• Ignore mountpoint configurations in site creation. [odelaere]

1.0b1 (2022-01-25)

• Added tests and better support for plone from 4.3 to 6.0. [odelaere]

1.0a3 (2021-10-04)

• Strip extension ids. [odelaere]
• Do not attempt to do anything if ACTIVE_BIGBANG id not True. [odelaere]

1.0a2 (2021-08-17)

• Fix package after renaming from collective.bigbang to collective.big.bang [laulaz]

1.0a1 (2021-08-13)

• Initial release. [bsuttor]