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

[Charles Plessy <plessy@debian.org>]

Le Mon, Nov 09, 2009 at 10:24:39AM +0100, Stefano Zacchiroli a écrit :
> On Sun, Nov 08, 2009 at 12:09:28AM +0900, Charles Plessy wrote:
> 
> > Still, having /usr/share/www as a document root does not prevent complex
> > packages to be fragmented between /usr/share, /usr/lib/cgi-bin/, /var/lib/,
> > /var/tmp, /var/run and /etc. Maybe you can double-check how many web servers
> > are able to cope with that before starting to invest a lot of time. Otherwise,
> > since shipping configuration files in /etc/webserver/conf.d will still be
> > necessary for these packages to work, there will little benefit in moving files
> > to /usr/share/www.
> 
> I don't understand this argument. Sure, complex packages will be split
> in several dirs, our policy states the rule for that to happen. The
> whole point of this standardization is to have a single URL prefix under
> which _entry_points_ for shipped web applications can be found, no
> matter how the applications are deployed on the filesystem. I found such
> a goal worthwhile by itself and orthogonal to the other concern you
> raise.

Hi Stefano,

the lintian error dir-or-file-in-var-www exists for a long time, and I believe
that most packages with active maintainers have already been split according to the
FHS. What I question is whether it is worth the effort to move the content of
/usr/share/<package> to /usr/share/www/<package>:

 - How many purely static websites do we distribute as Debian packages?
   (Note that /usr/share/doc/<package> is already served as http://localhost/doc/package/)

 - How many dynamic websites will start to work out of the box without
   the need for a specific configuration for each webserver?

I checked at the web application I maintain (emboss-explorer), and in its
particular case, it would still need an apache.conf file. That is not enough to
make statistics, so I am just asking if there will be many packages that can
take advantage of the proposed reorganisation. [And unfortunately source.debian.net
looks borken again…].

Of course, if the use of /usr/share/www/<package> is optional, everybody wins.

Cheers,

-- 
Charles Plessy
Debian Med packaging team,
http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-med
Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan