hi pierre, i'm going to take the step of cc'ing folks who might not be following this thread but would probably be interested. namely, the debian maintainers for any "httpd" package[1], php, mysql, and postgresql. anyway, i think it's a good idea to distinguish the different areas that we're trying to address like you have. now, to add more to this growing document... On Thu, Aug 19, 2004 at 03:41:34PM +0200, Pierre Habouzit wrote: > my english was horrible, wasn't it ? > > well, I'll try to make a list of what should be unified (I'll use a lot of > Sean's list, but not only) > > (1) DATABASE RELATED > > * whether/how to prompt for database usernames/passwords via debconf > (if necessary), and how not to store the root password. we could make the package databasename/username/password prompt a low priority question, and if the user skips those questions, they could be created automatically with a format something like $package/debian-$package/$randompw. > * having a list of available ressource (local or distant) it wouldn't be too hard to do something like this. get a list of the installed db servers, previously entered remote servers from the debconf cache, and finally provide "add a new remote server" > (2) WEB SERVERS RELATED > > * how to get a list of different installed web servers, and how to > select which ones to target for installation. again, i think a low priority debconf question would be appropriate. the question on my mind is, should it default to (when lowest prompt priority > low) not activating it for any sites, an arbitrary site, or activating it for all sites? > * whether/how to include one's configuration with apache. ideally > there'd be a conf.d style directory, though if the apache folks could > settle on a name for their config script calling that in postinst would > work too :) > * whether/how to restart the web server and what the default action should be... > (3) WEB APPS ADMIN RELATED > > * fhs-compliant layout for sites, examples of how to seperate the config > from the rest of the site. what constitutes something that ought to be > in /var/cache, /var/lib, et c. i don't think we'd have to go too much into this, since we already have the fhs to point to, but a few reminders to package maintainers wouldn't hurt. for example, i upgraded a certain mail-graphing package which stored some databases in /var/cache, and upon upgrading the package i lost 3 months of unrecoverable accumulated data. > * find solution for themeable sites (we don't want the admin to create > custom files into /usr/share or to patch sites by hand !!!) this really dips into the software design of the packages themselves, unfortunately. no reason not to include guidelines though. for example, i really like the way request-tracker does this[2], but other packages provide different ways that i think are equally acceptable (like providing the header/footers as config files, "theme" directories, et c). > (4) WEB APPS PACKAGING RELATED (aka MISC ;p) > > * whether/how to prompt for whether to leave the database after purge > (or uploaded files, or any local ressource generated by the app) again and what the default action should be. i think we should get a general clarification on what policy really says we should do, especially given all the hoo-hah lately about logfiles being removed on purge. also, what if the database is remote? tricky... > * default settings, disallowing default username/passwords for > web-accessible services. > * have the possibility to install as a subdirectory of or as a pure vhost there's no real way to have a clean and automagic vhost install, because external changes in dns are usually involved. i think what would be the closest thing we could do would be to provide a sample configuration. > (5) WEB SCRIPTING LANGAGES RELATED > > * php ought to have a php.d directory > * php PEAR packaging should have a policy this has been brought up a few times in the past, and it was the general consensus that there *should* be (similar to how debian gracefully co-exists with CPAN), but i don't know that anything further has been done. sean [1] grep-available -F Provides -s Maintainer httpd | sed -e 's/[^:]*://' | \ sort | uniq [2] there's a mirrored directory structure in /usr/local, and if a corresponding file exists there it is given preference to the one in /usr/share. --
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