[horde] Horde install ideas

[Kent Martin]

Folks,

It seems to me, particularly as things head more and more towards xml based
config files for the various apps, that, inserting some "download and
configure" horde application X type stuff into the admin section of the horde
framework should not be a massively difficult task, the idea being it would
look something like this:

First, a "wizard" type thing that checks out your php install (with lots of
pretty greens and reds, checks connections to the various backends (db, ldap,
imap, sendmail/whatever the windows thing is that sends mail) by means of
usernames and passwords passed in by the installation user. Some checking to
make sure the apache config looks ok could also take place at this point.

Then, they pass in, root username and password for mysql, name of the
database/user you want to use and voila, it wanders off and creates a database,
db user and the basic horde tables with the appropriate permissions.

Maybe a couple more questions (most important being, settings for authentication
backend and admin user), then a registry.php (registry.xml if that is the way
the wind blows) is written for the framework (as well as whatever other config
files are needed).

Following the basic, successful setup of the framework, the user then gets
various install "wizards" in the horde administration settings.  These wizards
download and untar the various apps, then do much the same as the above for
each application (ask questions, set up appropriate db tables etc) updating the
registry.php as required for each application.

The wizards would obviously need to be embedded within each app, so as to avoid
updating the horde framework every time you want to install a different version
of a new app - the upside being, that with the config files going to XML, a
good chunk of this work is already complete.  Further, these apps could check a
lot of things by simply calling the tests wrapped up in the horde framework
(ie, the "standard" tests - db, imap etc would be shipped in the horde tarball
rather than the application tarball).

Some of this stuff I will submit to this list as a very simple shell script that
I have just churned out to speed up my updating to new CVS cuts (all it does is
downloads the latest cuts, untars em, looks for a db create script and runs it,
creates config files and drops me in a vi session for each one, then drops me
into a vi session for registry.php), but I am sure that is not the way the
maintainers would would want to head... it is too clunky, too complex for joe
user, and, I suspect, next to useless for those folks who run under windows.

While this is hardly rocket science, I have not seen it mentioned here before
and it would certainly go a long way towards adding those, download - oh,
bugger, this is too complicated/too time consuming for me, people to the
userbase.

Take a glance @ the installation wizard for gallery (http://gallery.menalto.com)
for an idea of what I thought this could emulate.

Please bear in mind that the preceding idea comes with a limited understanding
of the horde architecture etc, however, it seems to me as several of the "next
generation" horde applications appear to be nearing beta releases it might be
time to jot down some thoughts on improving the current installation procedure.


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