On Sun, 2005-07-31 at 04:12 -0400, sean finney wrote:
>
> On Sat, Jul 30, 2005 at 04:45:42PM +1200, Penny Leach wrote:
> > The main point of the remote-* packages is that they are a means to
> > depend on a database. Currently, you can depend on a database, which
> > hurts those users that want their database on another machine, or just
> > recommend one, which means that it's possible (likely) to install a
> > non-working web application.
>
> i'm not convinced that this is the right way to solve such a problem.
> imho webapps the need databases should stick with 'Recommends' field
> for the database servers it could use.
Well, that's a problem because "Recommends" can be ignored. The web app
is not functional without a database, and possibly is literally
dependent on a particular version. In that case the Recommends does not
capture the need and it would be nice to have an appropriate "Depends".
Having "remote-..." packages might give some other possibilities as
well, and what does it lose?
Personally, "Recommends" have been a pain to me in the past by getting
pulled in by package installations where I do not want them. When I am
installing a web application I am often separating the application and
database for security reasons as much as for performance ones, and I
don't usually want to accidentally have database servers on the internet
- even unused ones.
> that said, it would be fairly easy (and not dependant on mucking with the
> package management system) to determine if a local database server is not
> installed, and inform the admin giving them the "stop now, i'll install
> a db server" vs. "i'm installing on a remote server" choices in debconf.
> something like this would be pretty easy to throw into dbconfig-common.
Excellent :-)
Cheers,
Andrew McMillan.
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