[freeside] Documentation

[ivan]

On Thu, Jan 11, 2001 at 05:51:01PM -0800, Jason Spence wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 11, 2001 at 03:17:22PM -0800, Jim Scott developed
> a new theory of relativity and: 
> 
> > Has anyone put together some good documentation on how a person that is new
> > to Linux would approach installing the Freeside product? I seen someone put
> > together an RPM package for redhat but when I tried to access it was
> > unavailable.
> >
> > In any case I have started to install but seems that the documentation
> > assumes alot of experience with the operating system.
> 
> Yeah, no kidding :) I've written some stuff that automates Freeside
> installation (including all the Perl module stuff), but it's
> encumbered by a contract I did.  I'm working with a client on
> releasing it to the community, and so far it looks like I'll succeed.
> 
> Doing an RPM won't work very well because then you would have to
> package up all the Perl modules as well, and that could be messy.

I disagree.  Depending on perl modules that are RPM (or .deb, or bsd
ports) packaged is a standard thing to do that works just fine.

> I
> vaguely remember something about not being able to distribute anything
> but the original tarballs for some of the modules from CPAN or
> something like that, but it was a while since I last thought of
> packaging Freeside up.

I'm pretty sure you are incorrect.  All of the perl modules Freeside
depends on are open-source, I believe.  If not, I will no longer use them.

>  In addition, the install script would have to
> locate the apache config file and then patch it with all the
> settings.

No, Freeside should not touch the system Apache config file - it should
run it's own instance of Apache with its own config file.

>  I've begun doing development on FreeBSD and OpenBSD lately,
> and I believe that the ports collection is far superior to the Linux
> packaging methods.

Bzzt.  No jihads here, thanks for playing.  (Hint: RPM != Linux)

>  For one thing, the installation scripts are much
> easier, because you just redefine PREFIX and stuff to install the
> apache, mod_ssl, and mod_perl ports under the Freeside installation
> tree, and then Freeside has its own little copy of Apache.

That's useless.  Freeside doesn't need its own little copy of Apache.  It
can depend on apache, mod_ssl and mod_perl in the packaging system, and
run the standard system apache binary with the -f flag and it's own
configuration file.

> I haven't tried with Debian either, but their packaging format also
> has superior updating and conflict resolution tools compared to RPM,
> in my opinion.

Even though I agree with you (in fact, I'm a Debian developer now), again,
this isn't the place. 

-- 
meow
_ivan