Debian's TWiki package

[Grant Bowman <grantbow@grantbow.com>]

Happy New Year everyone,

TWiki is a perl based wiki implementation that uses rcs and http "basic
authentication."  Given that a new version of TWiki is about to be
released I thought I would try to strike up some conversation about
existing packaging issues.

If anyone has ideas for solving some of the known TWiki packaging issues
or knows of other packages that have dealt with similar problems, please
let me know.  I'm not an expert but I am trying to learn how best to
solve some of the pending packaging issues.  I know Mark Eichin is also
on the debian-apache list and I hope he can join in.  I am in
discussions with the upstream author Peter Theony about these and other
matters and would like to be able to find solutions to some of the
existing problems and get them into the package in preparation for it
being added to stable someday.  

Upstream discussion of the Debian package can be found on the twiki.org
collaborative website.  The following URL is currently the only topic
that speaks directly to the Debian packaging features.

        http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Codev/TWikiOnDebian

The open questions about how best to package TWiki include the use of a
user & group during the Debian build process, the requirement for suid
perl, possible cgiwrap and/or mod_perl use, etc.  TWiki is also designed
to authenticate users through Apache by adding and using lines in an
.htpasswd file.  There might be considerations beyond what I'm aware of
that a well built Debian package should incorporate.

If twikidat should be a user, I assume that section 11.9 of the Debian
Policy should apply, right?  I don't know if the recommended discussions
have already taken place on the appropriate mail lists or not.

Discussion of some of the issues can be found in the bugs for the
package.  

        http://bugs.debian.org/twiki

The default upstream install is described in the documentation file
TWikiDocumentation.html in the twiki package or at the URL below.  The
included Appendix A has filesystem listings of permissions on the
default upstream install.

        http://TWiki.org/cgi-bin/view/TWiki/TWikiDocumentation
        
Thanks,

-- 
-- Grant Bowman                                <grantbow@grantbow.com>