Re: [gentoo-dev] [GLEP] Web Application Installation

[Stuart Herbert <stuart@gentoo.org>]

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'lo Max,

Keep it comming.  I think we're really getting this thrashed out ;-)

On Sunday 03 August 2003 4:20 pm, Max Kalika wrote:
> Correct.  I also create an apache config block as
>
>   /etc/webapps/<application>.conf

If it's apache-specific, can't we at least call it <application>-apache.conf?

> This is what gets included into the apache config if a user activates the
> specific application.  For example, the horde config block looks like this:
>
> max@ike webapps $ cat horde-apache.conf
> Alias /horde /usr/share/webapps/horde/
> <Directory /usr/share/webapps/horde>
>   Allow from all
>   AllowOverride Limit
>   Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
>   php_flag safe_mode off
>   php_flag magic_quotes_gpc off
>   php_flag magic_quotes_runtime off
>   php_flag register_globals off
>   php_flag file_uploads on
>   php_value upload_max_filesize 50M
>   php_value include_path /usr/lib/horde-pear
> </Directory>

Thanks for the example - it helps a great deal.  Now, how would you deal with 
a site needing to run two copies of horde under the one web server?

> The whole reason for keeping config files under /etc is for CONFIG_PROTECT.
> Multiple versions of any app would be handled the same way as all other
> packages on Gentoo -- core files get overwritten in an upgrade and the
> config files are updated through dispatch-conf/etc-update/manually.

Yeah - but how do you handle sites (like ISPs) that need to run multiple 
installations of the same app on the same box?  You can't have a single 
globla configuration file for that.  Makes sense for the home user, but not 
for ISPs.

> Right, but if the file itself gets rearranged constantly (as some apps do),
> it may be difficult to maintain the patch.  

In ten years of maintaining apps, I've never found it a problem myself.  But 
hey - it's not important ;-)

> But again, this all depends on
> the package at hand -- as stands right now everywhere else in gentoo, lets
> do what is easier/more maintainable.

Absolutely.  Gentoo works *because* it is anarchy ;-)

> > Last night, I thought I was sure.  Unfortunately, waking up today I've
> > forgotten ;-)  I'll go back and re-read the thread.
>
> Don't you just hate when that happens :-)

Yeah ;-)

> Currently there's nothing in the eclass that is language specific other
> than that check_php function (which, as I said before, I'd like to find a
> replacement for).

Well, PHP apps'll need to check for which PHP extensions are active from time 
to time.

> Certainly.  Perhaps if we don't find anything that is language specific
> (which I have yet to see), we can take a different approach and do
> webapp-<webservertype>

See previous emails.  I *really* don't support making any of this stuff 
webserver-specific in the ebuilds or eclasses ;-)  A two-stage install - 
ebuilds to get apps onto the machine, user-space tools to install an app for 
a specific web server - are the way to go, imho.

How do you make an app install on (say) Zeus or (say) iPlanet or (say) 
n.e.other web server if the ebuild itself is server-specific?  We're boxing 
ourselves in, for no good reason.

Gentoo's supposed to be about configurability.  It even says so right at the 
top of www.gentoo.org.  Let's not throw that out of the window just yet ;-)

> > It can't be that difficult - it's only  a web server.
>
> Isn't that on the list of "Famous Last Words" ? :-)

Lots of laughter ;-)  I hope not!

Take care,
Stu
-- 
Stuart Herbert                                              stuart@gentoo.org
Gentoo Developer                                       http://www.gentoo.org/
Beta packages for download            http://dev.gentoo.org/~stuart/packages/

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