[horde] Horde install ideas

[`Da Elf]

Personally, the worst problems I've had with installing horde have nothing to do
with horde.  It's usually when I make some monkey move compiling PHP on my
albeit funky Cobalt RaQ4, or the typical typo in a config file somewhere.

Installing horde (cvs) took me about an hour on a clean server, after I got PHP
wrestled down.  From horde 3 there really isn't that much more to automate for
the install.  It's pretty much drop it in and go.

Getting into the code is 1/2 the fun anyway, I knew exactly (nothing) about PHP
before I started using horde, (not that I know a lot now).  Wizards take a lot
of running around in the pipes away and that's how you learn to fix your apps
when they hose.  :)  Full-on Automation => Baaaaad.

Though, I'm sure that's the ultimate goal, somewhere down the road.




Quoting Kent Martin <horde at kentsworld.com>:

: 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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--
__________________________________________________ EK - `Da Elf __________
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