Hi Squirrel,
On Jun 26, 2008, at 8:03 PM, Squirrel wrote:
Hi guys,
I know the installation/update is not that complicated and I
discussed that
on this list some time ago, too. Nevertheless I have an (incomplete)
idea to
this topic. Maybe you had this already, maybe it's not a good idea
at all,
however:
Recently I had to modify the login.vm file on the server as I found
no way
to change this page within XWiki. By this time I realized that I
have to
write down my modification for the next update. So I thought maybe
it would
be possible to change the update process a bit.
What about a web-updater? If you would create a web-updater you
could show
the troublesome files and show the differences (maybe by generating
for each
and every file a MD5 hash by the time you release a version) and let
the
user decide how to proceed (like in Linux when an update tries to
change
grub). In addition to that you could stream important release
information
into this 'update'-area (new version, security stuff, etc. and, if
the user
is willing to provide them, some usage-statistics). Maybe you could
even
differentiate between core and plugin updates...
Yep, this is something we'd like to do. Actually we call it the
Application Manager.
Here are some short specs for it:
* Ability to install/uninstall apps
* Ability to manage app dependencies
* Ability to upgrade applications
* Ability to list and install available apps defined in a remote
repository
* Ability to have not only wiki pages but also jars + Interface
extensions + Skin extensions in application XARs
So for the part about "ability to upgrade apps" yes I also envision
storing a hash and if different from the user version show some diff
and let the user decide.
Now all we need is some help... Would you be able to help design/
implement this?
Thanks
-Vincent