[freeside] Documentation

[Jason Spence]

On Mon, Jan 15, 2001 at 01:04:21AM -0800, ivan said: 

[snipped Ivan's rather monosyllabic responses]

Ok, so you didn't like my ideas, eh? :)

Right then.  Here's a few things I'd like to point out:

1) I want it to be easy to install Freeside.  I am going to soon
   release things that will make it easier than it is now.  You seem
   to be arguing with that concept, but I can't tell for sure until
   you answer the questions below.

2) Freeside has been open to the public for quite some time now, and
   no major Linux/BSD distribution has created a package/port for it
   (well, maybe Debian, but I don't want to check right now).

3) As a result of #2, I believe that Freeside's userbase is smaller
   than it could be.  I would like to fix this.
    
> Freeside will not install "its own little Apache installation".

I agree that it is the packaging system's responsibility to provide
the Apache environment, and maybe distributing Apache with the stock
distribution is a little much.  

However, I *do* think that Freeside should provide a mechanism for
messing with the Apache config files, since Freeside could probably do
a better job of it than the user could (see user mailing list and Big
Fat Warnings in Freeside documentation for justification).

> > > 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.
> > 
> > Hmm.  That's a good point.  However, wouldn't it be a win to give the
> > user an option at installtime to install the latest Apache?
>
> > I figure
> > that the install script could go get the system Apache's version and
> > compare it with the one in the superpackage (assuming that Apache is
> > distributed with the Freeside superpackage)
> 
> There will be no "Freeside superpackage".

Well, maybe not one that *you* will distribute, but I've already
created an installation system that does most of what I've described,  
and I think that my life is easier as a result.  Are you ok with a
third party doing all that work and simply integrating the stock
release into their packaging system? 

> > and gently point out to
> > the user that "gee Mr. User, your system apache version 1.2.3 is not
> > as recent as my 1.3.14, would you like me to install Freeside on
> > Apache 1.3.14?"
> 
> No.

This is what I'm unclear on: are you not ok with Freeside itself doing
that, or a distribution's packaging system doing that?

> > Actually, I need to package cdctl (one of my OS projects) for Debian.
> > Would you mind if I mailed you with a few questions I had about
> > packaging it?
> 
> Probably not.
> 
> http://www.debian.org/doc/maint-guide/
> http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/packaging.html/

Thanks for the links; I'll let you know if I run into a wall with the
packaging system after I integrate some more mmc patches into cdctl.

 - Jason