Re: Webapps policy: final RFC
Hi !
Thanks for the comments ! I'll reply on my part.
Le mardi 11 août 2009 15:14:46, sean finney a écrit :
> > However, a lot of PHP code, for instance, rely on relative path for their
> > inclusion, which is not compatible with this: as soon as a file from
> > share calls for the inclusion of a file that is in var using a relative
> > path, this will fail.
>
> i think the application should be responsible for setting its include
> path, which is easily doable with a centrally included debian file or
> apache configuration. i realize i'm a bit of a hypocrite for saying
> this because i'm using a set of symlinks in the cacti package, though :)
Well, the issue here is that often there is a strong misunderstanding between
upstream developpers and packagers.
Upstream developpers think of their application as files standing on a single
directory which the user copies into its webserver's root.
Hence, when you explain that you split the files according to some strange
policy about static vs. dynamic content, they just don't understand and even
sometimes claim you're breaking their software.
Another issue is that it is a real pain to maintain distribution-specific
patches for that purpose. It can even lead to new issues for this case.
Hence, the symlink solution is the best solution since it allows to install
unmodified files matching the same structure as the original project had.
As a side note, a similar issue exists for multi-site installations, most of
upstream's devs would just say "copy the file in each directory". Here also I
would love to see a standardised way of sharing the same files for multisites
install.
This is the problem for mediawiki for instance.... (someone is working on
solving that for mediawiki by the way)
Romain
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