Redundant/oudated instruction between install.txt, install.sh and the install wizard
| Project: | Hosting |
| Version: | 6.x-0.3-rc3 |
| Component: | Code |
| Category: | bug report |
| Priority: | normal |
| Assigned: | Unassigned |
| Status: | closed |
On line 65 of hosting/web_server/hosting_web_server.module, the function _hosting_httpd_conf_requirements() provides helper information during the Install wizard to include the path to the aegir-generated site vhost configs in the main apache config.
It generally advises to add it to Apache's httpd.conf wherever that may be, but in the hostmaster INSTALL.txt, we actually place this Include line in its own file 'aegir' in /etc/apache2/conf.d/
cat /etc/apache2/conf.d/aegir
Include /var/aegir/config/vhost.d/
NameVirtualHost *:80
This obviously makes the Hosting instruction redundant, and in fact in my opinion this latter placement into conf.d/ is better anyway. Should this instruction in the Hosting helper information in the wizard be removed, or can we not rely on the idea that people have followed the INSTALL.txt.. some other commands in the install wizard (like creating the config dir, create the backups dir etc, are also instructed in hostmaster/INSTALL.txt)
So no patch for this one, as I'm uncertain whether we want to remove the info altogether, or modify the instruction to match the /etc/apache2/conf.d per the INSTALL.txt, even though it's redundant due to already having been done.
#1
Well... I'm not sure what to do with this. Is redundancy a so bad thing? Maybe we could just patch hosting to say this was mentionned in INSTALL.txt?
#2
It's not so bad a thing as long as the instructions are identical :) and at the moment we are placing the Include into httpd.conf and into conf.d/aegir.
I'll patch the hosting instructions to say 'you may have already performed this per the instructions in INSTALL.txt' and replicate the commands, or somesuch
#3
Patch against HEAD attached with some basic rewording of the instructions. I'm not entirely happy with the wording, maybe steveparks or jonhattan or other documentation ninjas can improve :)
#4
Oops, forgot to commit this before the release... Marking critical so i don't forget ... I didn't commit just because I wanted to make sure it actually compiled and i can't run the wizard right now.
Please test.
#5
Jonhattan's confirmed over IRC this patch applies cleanly, but I believe much more work needs to be done as Vertice has suggested the hostmaster docs become the 'primary' source of instruction.. this being the case, hostmaster/hosting needs to be brought much more up to date with the significant process occuring in INSTALL.txt. See #553230: INSTALL.txt documentation fixes / changes / improvements
#6
So there are two things to do here.
1) decide whether we want to keep redundancy between the three canonical sources of information (install.txt, install.sh and the install wizard)
2) make sure everything is in sync
I vote for keeping minimal redundancy. I am confortable with the way the INSTALL.txt is right now. Its mission should be to "get the user to the install wizard AND help packaging or automation people get aegir working WITHOUT the wizard", which explains why we have so much trouble getting this to work.
Eventually, install.sh will be wrapped back into provision itself and all you will need to install aegir will be to install drush, provision then drush dl --with-depends hostmaster (say) and drush provision install --profile=hostmaster aegir.example.com. Of course, we're not there yet (we need the install profile refactoring to get into d7 and port the frontend to d7), but that's the idea.
To even complicate things more, note that the debian package features its own version of install.sh as debian/postinst. I would like to refactor this so that there's no duplication, but it's difficult because provision needs to be standalone while install.sh does everything (including provision work). See http://git.koumbit.net/?p=drupal/modules/provision/.git;a=blob;f=debian/...
So, my point here is that I don't mind the redundancy, but we should keep it minimal, and easy to sync. I would love to have INSTALL.txt be this text file I follow when I install aegir where i just setup as much as possible in a shell before setting up the drupal then click next until i get the frontend working. I think we're pretty much there and the only thing we have to fix is a few outdated docs in the frontend.
#7
That's exactly my current install process, and I think the fact I experience NO errors doing so for rc4 or HEAD is testament to the solid INSTALL.txt as it stands.
It still makes more sense to me that Hostmaster profile wizard should exist only to take the database credentials and populate the database with content, enable modules/theme etc, i.e do the job of an install profile! And of course provide the instruction at the end for the initial 'hosting setup' provision command. In other words it takes over from INSTALL.txt at the time the install profile needs to be initiated, and carries it through to the end.
#8
I committed the patch listed in #3. If there's another glaring issue here, feel free to bump this issue back to critical (and of course submit a patch ;), otherwise I don't feel this is release critical now.
#9
There have been multiple refactors since this issue. I am closing it, things are good enough now, and any existing rough edges will be dealt with when provision is capable of handling the install itself.
#10
Automatically closed -- issue fixed for 2 weeks with no activity.