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Re: common, FHS-compliant, default document root for the various web servers



On Thu, Nov 05, 2009 at 10:21:48AM +0100, Jan Hauke Rahm wrote:
> Okay, I understand. Now, I see two ways actually to solve this.
> 
> 1. If we have a generic location for packages to drop their
>    html/php/whatever files, like /var/lib/www, all web servers can keep
>    their DocRoot as /var/www and provide an alias for /var/lib/www, for
>    instance /debian. That way webapp packages don't even have to care
>    about the web server in charge, we don't need a webapps-common, we
>    just need all web servers to provide that alias (or if they can't,
>    they have to symlink it). Every webapp would be available at
>    localhost/debian/webapp. Since it's either a symlink or a conffile
>    that makes this /debian alias, it can be changed by the local
>    sysadmin without any risks and without touching our packages data.
> 2. If however all packages put their files in different locations, we
>    need your suggested solution with scripts for each webserver. A
>    package like webapps-common could run
>    foreach server in /usr/share/webapps-common/webservers/*; do
>       ./$server webappPath webappName
>    done
>    and the web servers provide aliases/symlinks accordingly.
> 
> So, what's wrong with (1) that we don't go this simple path?

Fair question.  As I can't came up with an answer, I guess that (1) is
indeed a better solution, due Occam's razor.

I only have a couple of remarks on some details:

- According to FHS, /var/lib/ is for "variable state information". As we
  are talking about static HTML content, which only change upon package
  upgrade, I believe it would not be appropriate. A better place would
  probably be /usr/share/www/PACKAGE/ (maybe some FHS guru can give us
  some insights here ...)

- Regarding the URL that would be mapped to that dir, I don't
  particularly like /debian/ (even though I've advanced it). However the
  alternative solutions I can come up with (e.g. /packages/) are
  actually uglier. So I guess /debian/ can stay. Some of the -webapps
  people can probably come up with wiser suggestions ...

Cheers.

-- 
Stefano Zacchiroli -o- PhD in Computer Science \ PostDoc @ Univ. Paris 7
zack@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} -<>- http://upsilon.cc/zack/
Dietro un grande uomo c'è ..|  .  |. Et ne m'en veux pas si je te tutoie
sempre uno zaino ...........| ..: |.... Je dis tu à tous ceux que j'aime

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