Re: Should webapp enable an apache module if needed?
* Tore Anderson
> 4) ask the user permission to enable the default configuration
> required for your webapp to work, if not granted: exit gracefully
* sean finney
> for 4, however, i think the fact that the admin is installing the
> package should already count as a default "yes".
Possibly, but the problem is that it is entirely impossible to know if
your default configuration is suitable for the environment your package
is going to be installed in - you cannot know if the user wants the
configuration for the web application to appear in a VirtualHost of his
own making (possibly with mandatory encryption and/or authentication)
or in the global part of the configuration file.
That's why I'd prefer you to err on the side of caution and not change
my configuration unless I explicitly told you it is OK to do so.
Many years I've been an admin for hundreds of servers now, and
several unfortunate incidents caused by maintainer scripts trying to be
clever has caused me to favour this approach. I just don't like
surprises of any kind, and I cannot imagine I'm alone in that regard.
Perhaps, if the entire webapp handling logic is merged into an
abstraction layer the various httpds may provide, this can be achived
by having the httpd package ask one question to rule them all: «Do you
want packages providing web server modules or web applications to
automatically reconfigure this httpd package as they see fit upon
installation? Yes/No»
--
Tore Anderson
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