Apache situation.
Greetings,
Apologies if this has been covered in the past. I searched the -devel
archives extensively but I didn't find what I was looking for.
I sent the following to the Apache maintainer but have not yet received
a response. I thought I would post it also to the list for comment.
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Greetings,
Could you answer some questions for me as a Debian developer regarding
the Apache packaging situation in potato? This is driving me nuts.
I came from Solaris, where you compile whatever you want to run. Debian
attracted me because it meant that I wouldn't have to do that, and
whatever I installed from a package would fit the Debian "Way" (e.g.
conf files in the "right" place, logfiles all together, etc). In
addition, I could configure numerous servers identically with just a few
dpkg commands. This was great, at least until I came to Apache.
We've run Apache since the early 1.2 days on Solaris. Solaris (2.5.1 at
least) has problems with DSOs, and other problems as well, though I do
have to say it has been extremely stable. On our Solaris box, I have
apache compiled with mod_perl static. I also use mod_ssl as a DSO, and
php3 as a DSO. We're moving to Mason implementations of our web sites
as well, and I need Apache::DBI for persistent database connections.
Hip hip hooray--all those things are available as Debian packages...sort
of. I can install the stock Apache server, and load all the above as
DSOs. But wait...mod_perl is not stable as a DSO, so I need it loaded
static. Enter apache-perl. Whoops, apache-perl is missing most of the
good stuff that comes with the regular apache package. Oh yeah, and
Apache::DBI depends on libapache-mod-perl. Oops, lots of Apache modules
depend on apache, not apache-perl. Argh!
So I've spent the better part of two days rebuilding the apache package
to support mod_perl statically linked. I just about have it, the last
stumbling block is that I can't figure out how to get the mod_perl
perl-side stuff into the package because the mod_perl installer thinks I
already have it, so it won't put it into the debian/tmp directory. My
latest idea is to read the .packlist and use that to figure out what to
put into the tmp directory. (Comments on this issue appreciated also)
After I get this done I either have to modify the libapache-dbi-perl
package to ignore the dependency on libapache-mod-perl, or strip the
mod-perl package to contain nothing just so I can have the dependency
satisfied. Or I could use dpkg --force, but that makes apt complain a
lot, and requires that all the people that help me maintain the servers
know exactly what's going on.
Also, none of this takes into account the fact that someone is probably
going to want to run Apache both with and without mod_perl to lower
memory consumption. I have no idea how to handle that since the
binaries would have to be called apache and apache-mod-perl, and look
for their conffiles in separate places, or whathaveyou. Currently I
don't know if the project ever solved the problem of multiple webservers
running simultaneously.
I know any changes are not going to make it into potato. But why isn't
there a virtual "apache" package? The policy could be that all Apaches
must have DSO support. Then modules could be built depending on
apache. Then we could have apache-plain and apache-perl packages that
provide the server itself. Things like libapache-dbi-perl could depend
on apache-perl or libapache-mod-perl if you want perl as a DSO.
Also, this would mean that just one .dsc file could produce all of the
above packages--apache, apache-common, apache-dev, apache-perl,
apache-plain. It would be kind of a hack to compile both binaries, but
I think it could be done. Nightmare to maintain, though.
OR...maybe I've got this all wrong and there is an easier way?
Sorry for the rant, especially if this is an old argument. I just don't
understand. Thanks in advance for answering.
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--
| Charles R. (C. R.) Oldham | NCA Commission on Schools |
| cro@nca.asu.edu | Arizona St. Univ., PO Box 873011,|
| V:480/965-8700 F:480/965-9423 | Tempe, AZ 85287-3011 _ |
| "I like it!"--Citizen G'Kar | #include <disclaimer.h> X_>|
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