[MKDoc-dev] Improving MKDoc Installation

[Chris Croome]

Hi

On Thu 23-Sep-2004 at 03:59:29PM -0400, Sam Tregar wrote:
> On Thu, 23 Sep 2004, Chris Swaine wrote:
> 
> > Therefore, there needs to be a reality that what is required is
> > a downloadable zip file, which can be unzipped and then uploaded
> > to their webspace. It is very likely that through a virtual
> > control panel, they can enable an MySQL database. The idea then
> > is that they upload through FTP the folders [which unzip
> > automatically into the required structure] and then call an
> > install script - mysite.com/folder/install
> 
> This sounds great.  That said, I have no idea how to do this with
> MKDoc!  As currently architected it requires much more control
> over Apache than a typical shared-hosting environment will allow.

Yes, and it's the same situation with other CMS's that are not
written in PHP, like Plone which requires Zope or the Java ones
which also have requirements that most cheap hosting does not
provide. 

Also many PHP applications require mod_rewrite for nice URIs (for
example MediaWiki, http://wikipedia.sf.net/, the Wikipedia software)
and many cheap hosting places don't allow people to use mod_rewrite
because the rules have to be added to the main httpd.conf file and
can't be put in .htaccess files.

The early versions of MKDoc could be run from a standard cgi-bin
directory and didn't require mod_perl but there were too many
mod_perl features that were needed for this to be maintained.

There are places that do mod_perl hosting where each user has their
own apache and mod_perl, this is a list of some:

- ISPs Supporting mod_perl
  http://theory.uwinnipeg.ca/modperl/help/isps.html 

And this is a document with some background on this and the various
ways to set it up: 

- mod_perl for ISPs. mod_perl and Virtual Hosts
  http://theory.uwinnipeg.ca/modperl/docs/general/multiuser/multiuser.html

We are currently working with Gossomer-Threads to intergrate MKDoc
into their hosting set up and this should allow us to offer
relatively cheap hosting, we haven't sorted out the prices yet.

> I think it's very possible to imagine setting up a free or
> low-cost hosting environment for charitable projects.  With
> control over the server setup we could make it very easy for new
> users to come in and setup a new MKDoc instance.

A place offering free MKDoc hosting would be great! This is
something that other CMSs that are hard to install also offer, for
example Plone hosting here:

- Objectis Free Zope and Plone hosting - English
  http://www.objectis.org/english

With 1.8 it's easy to customise MKDoc by adding the organisation
logo by uploading logo.png as a file attachment to the root document
and then uploading style.css for the custom CSS. Also style.css can
be uploaded to any document and when you do this the style rules
also apply to all child documents so you can simply do things like
make different sections of a site have different colour schemes.
This means that a basic hosting package where you don't have access
to the file system for editing the templates but you can change the
whole look of the site is possible

> > Is this unrealistic - no - it is already out there.
> 
> For an Apache/mod_perl application?  Point me to it!  I've looked
> everywhere for an example of a large-scale Apache/mod_perl
> database app with a simple installer and I found nothing.

I think Sam is right...

The ideal solution is to provide packages in the native format for
the OS, eg RPMS for Fedora / RedHat / Mandrake / SuSE, debs for
debian and so on... Then it becomes a simple task of adding a line
to /etc/apt/sources.list (or whetever) and then doing apt-get
update; apt-get install MKDoc, but of course root is required for
this...

I see the Krang way of doing this as an interim way of making things
easier prior to getting the native packages sorted out.

There is a test apt repo for Fedora here that contains all the MKDoc
modules on CPAN (plus some other things) for Fedora 2 (I stopped
building them for Fedora 1 a while ago):

  http://rpms.mkdoc.com/

  http://rpms.mkdoc.com/pub/apt/fedora/linux/2/i386/RPMS.mkdoc/

One thing I'm not sure about with Sam's suggestion is how to deal
with native CPAN packages being installed or not, for example Petal
is packages for debian already and there are a lot of the CPAN
modules that are needed packaged for Fedora (eg XML:RSS) by 3rd
parties (DAG, Freshrpms etc) and many people will be using these
repos already...

The plan I had for this was to create Fedora RPMS for packages as
they were put on CPAN and then at some point create a MKDoc bundle
like the Bricolage one (I fact I did create one a while back but it
was never uploaded to CPAN). 

The tricky issue thougih is apache and mod_perl, currently apache 1.3
is required and many distros, like Fedora, ship with apache 2... so
a new apache and mod_perl does need to be complied from source.

It could be that it would be easier to target debian for native
packages since I expect they will be using apache 1.3 for the
forseeable future... 

With the Krang way of providing the packages there is always the
option for people to do a manual install if they want to compile
their own apache etc...

Chris

-- 
Chris Croome                               <chris at webarchitects.co.uk>
web design                             http://www.webarchitects.co.uk/ 
web content management                               http://mkdoc.com/