Re: [gentoo-portage-dev] webapp-config and webapps

[Anthony Gorecki <anthony@ectrolinux.com>]

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On Thursday 28 October 2004 2:13 pm, Stuart Herbert wrote:
> On Thursday 28 October 2004 21:34, Wendall Cada wrote:
> > I use a virual hosting environment, and do not want to use or enable
> > webapp-config.
>
> I respect your decision to choose not to use webapp-config.  Is there any
> particular reason why you don't want to use webapp-config?

I concur with Wendall's decision; I don't use it because I've found that it 
creates -more- work than manually installing web applications. See your 
comment on self-configuring web applications.


In addition, some web applications will download their own source files on 
demand and update themselves on demand, in a manner similar to Portage. 
webapp-config would be completely unsuitable for these applications. 


As a second addition to the above, and in response to "Web applications should 
not be owned by the same user as the web server," some web applications 
-should- and are -designed and required- to be owned by the web server's 
user.

An example of the aforementioned web application would be one that is also 
responsible for managing the entire file hierarchy of a website: it must be 
able to do so without any additional file ownership work-arounds (using FTP 
to update the website is not acceptable). 

In these cases, additional backend configuration is necessary to protect 
websites from unauthorized access (PHP's open_basedir, for example), however 
this would be soley the responsibility of web host and the script. 
webapp-config should be completely oblivious to this, as these safeguards 
would obviously beyond the scope of the program; however, it should support 
the functionality if it is required.


> At the moment, webapp-config is used whether or not you're using a virtual
> hosting environment.  The only difference is that webapp-config isn't
> automatically executed if you have the 'vhosts' USE flag set.

If the vhost flag is not set, is there a way to alter the install location 
from /var/www/localhost? If there isn't, why isn't there? I haven't had a 
chance to look through all of the software resources for this program, though 
I haven't seen anything helpful this far.


-- 
Anthony Gorecki
Ectro-Linux Foundation


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