xwiki installation not too friendly - xwiki-devs@xwiki.org

Ludovic Dubost

18 Aug 18 Aug

9:35 a.m.

New subject: [xwiki-dev] xwiki installation not too friendly

Hi Jason, We are trying to solve this.. We started by doing a windows only package embedding everything in a ready to go package. We also have an experimental (not release) package with Jetty and HSQLDb so there are no big dependencies. Jeremi is supposed to finish this but was busy on a Google Summer of Code project. He'll be able to wrap this up in September. We also have a backup (import/export) tools which we just released which can be adapted for initial import and installs in other environments. See http://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/AdminGuide/Backup There are one thing missing in your proposed approach which is loading the default data (the import tool can do this just after having done the schemaUpdate). There is one thing I don't like which is the dependency on ant. We need something that doesn't have this dependency. Many users are not developers and might not have ant. An shell script and a batch file running java is probably the way to go. If you want to help you are welcome to. Ludovic Jason Novotny wrote:

...

Hi Ludovic, I've been looking at the instructions at http://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Main/InstallLinuxTomcat and there are about 8 steps too many for this software to gain widespread adoption in my opinion. One of the biggest issues I see is that it uses Hibernate which is great since technically db tables can be auto generated using the Hibernate schemaexport tool with the xwiki mapping file to create tables in any database of your choosing. However, it looks like I specifically need MySQL and I don't know why. I look at the JBoss + Postgres install page and sure enough it points out the flaws of this approach: "Download the sample database and convert for Postgres. See PostgresDatabase <http://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Dev/PostgresDatabase> -> This tool has been made by Nicholas Vesser.. It was done with an old mysql database for XWiki.. You should try it with the latest database.." hmm, not fun. Personally, what I would like to see is this: 1) Download xwiki.zip 2) Run "ant install" which performs: Creating/deploying xwiki webapp to your Tomcat that you set in your build.properties Uses schemaexport to generate tables in your database that is defined in the hibernate properties file 3) Start your server and voila! Further, it could use hsqldb as a default so if you didn't reconfigure the hibernate properties file it would simply use hsqldb which can be bundled with the wiki webapp and used for test purposes. How does this sound? Cheers, Jason ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- You receive this message as a subscriber of the xwiki-dev(a)objectweb.org mailing list. To unsubscribe: mailto:xwiki-dev-unsubscribe@objectweb.org For general help: mailto:sympa@objectweb.org?subject=help ObjectWeb mailing lists service home page: http://www.objectweb.org/wws

-- Ludovic Dubost XPertNet: http://www.xpertnet.fr/ Blog: http://www.ludovic.org/blog/ XWiki: http://www.xwiki.com Skype: ldubost AIM: nvludo Yahoo: ludovic

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Ludovic Dubost

11:15 a.m.

New subject: [xwiki-dev] xwiki installation not too friendly

jeremi joslin wrote:

...

On 8/18/05, Ludovic Dubost <ludovic(a)xwiki.com> wrote:

Hi Jason, We are trying to solve this.. We started by doing a windows only package embedding everything in a ready to go package. We also have an experimental (not release) package with Jetty and HSQLDb so there are no big dependencies. Jeremi is supposed to finish this but was busy on a Google Summer of Code project. He'll be able to wrap this up in September.

[snip] Hi Jason and Ludovic, It's not windows only, it's cross-plateform. I'm using it on my linux.

I was talking of the tomcat + mysql package all-in-one.. This one is windows only.. Of course tje Jetty + HSQLDB will be cross platform. Ludovic

...

Jérémi ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- You receive this message as a subscriber of the xwiki-dev(a)objectweb.org mailing list. To unsubscribe: mailto:xwiki-dev-unsubscribe@objectweb.org For general help: mailto:sympa@objectweb.org?subject=help ObjectWeb mailing lists service home page: http://www.objectweb.org/wws

-- Ludovic Dubost XPertNet: http://www.xpertnet.fr/ Blog: http://www.ludovic.org/blog/ XWiki: http://www.xwiki.com Skype: ldubost AIM: nvludo Yahoo: ludovic

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Jason Novotny

11:09 a.m.

New subject: [xwiki-dev] xwiki installation not too friendly

Hi Ludovic and Jeremi, Thanks for your responses!

...

We also have a backup (import/export) tools which we just released which can be adapted for initial import and installs in other environments. See http://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/AdminGuide/Backup

Ok, I looked at this and have xwiki from svn but can't find the files the page mentions, where can I find these backup tools, or do they still need more development?

...

There are one thing missing in your proposed approach which is loading the default data (the import tool can do this just after having done the schemaUpdate). There is one thing I don't like which is the dependency on ant. We need something that doesn't have this dependency. Many users are not developers and might not have ant. An shell script and a batch file running java is probably the way to go.

I don't think that's much of an issue at all, since Ant itself includes ant.sh, ant.bat to run it as a script. Or you include ant.jar in your distro and use your own wrapper scripts to call it. In the end, though, the best reason I've found to do as much as possible in Ant and write only the simplest wrapper scripts is that means you keep your code and build/deploy process as platform independent as possible which makes debugging a lot easier. You're right about importing default data. I can't really see any clever way to do this that is database agnostic. One idea is that you write a simple Main class that uses hibernate and your persistent classes to programmatically create the data. This in theory would then work for any database as well and could even be the start of unit testing with your persistent classes... My main point here though is I agree you don't want to force users to become developers, but it's even worse that users have to become DBA's. In my country a database admin usually gets paid more than a developer and requires more specialized skills ;-) Cheers, Jason

...

If you want to help you are welcome to. Ludovic Jason Novotny wrote:

Hi Ludovic, I've been looking at the instructions at http://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Main/InstallLinuxTomcat and there are about 8 steps too many for this software to gain widespread adoption in my opinion. One of the biggest issues I see is that it uses Hibernate which is great since technically db tables can be auto generated using the Hibernate schemaexport tool with the xwiki mapping file to create tables in any database of your choosing. However, it looks like I specifically need MySQL and I don't know why. I look at the JBoss + Postgres install page and sure enough it points out the flaws of this approach: "Download the sample database and convert for Postgres. See PostgresDatabase <http://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Dev/PostgresDatabase> -> This tool has been made by Nicholas Vesser.. It was done with an old mysql database for XWiki.. You should try it with the latest database.." hmm, not fun. Personally, what I would like to see is this: 1) Download xwiki.zip 2) Run "ant install" which performs: Creating/deploying xwiki webapp to your Tomcat that you set in your build.properties Uses schemaexport to generate tables in your database that is defined in the hibernate properties file 3) Start your server and voila! Further, it could use hsqldb as a default so if you didn't reconfigure the hibernate properties file it would simply use hsqldb which can be bundled with the wiki webapp and used for test purposes. How does this sound? Cheers, Jason ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- You receive this message as a subscriber of the xwiki-dev(a)objectweb.org mailing list. To unsubscribe: mailto:xwiki-dev-unsubscribe@objectweb.org For general help: mailto:sympa@objectweb.org?subject=help ObjectWeb mailing lists service home page: http://www.objectweb.org/wws

------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- You receive this message as a subscriber of the xwiki-dev(a)objectweb.org mailing list. To unsubscribe: mailto:xwiki-dev-unsubscribe@objectweb.org For general help: mailto:sympa@objectweb.org?subject=help ObjectWeb mailing lists service home page: http://www.objectweb.org/wws

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Ludovic Dubost

11:21 a.m.

New subject: [xwiki-dev] xwiki installation not too friendly

The backup files are attached on the page.. http://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/download/AdminGuide/Backup/backup-0-9-2.zip Actually xwiki already contains ant.jar so it should be possible to do what you say. It's an interesting approach.. We already have an ant build script which calls the groovy script.. Ludovic Jason Novotny wrote:

...

Hi Ludovic and Jeremi, Thanks for your responses!

We also have a backup (import/export) tools which we just released which can be adapted for initial import and installs in other environments. See http://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/AdminGuide/Backup

Ok, I looked at this and have xwiki from svn but can't find the files the page mentions, where can I find these backup tools, or do they still need more development?

There are one thing missing in your proposed approach which is loading the default data (the import tool can do this just after having done the schemaUpdate). There is one thing I don't like which is the dependency on ant. We need something that doesn't have this dependency. Many users are not developers and might not have ant. An shell script and a batch file running java is probably the way to go.

I don't think that's much of an issue at all, since Ant itself includes ant.sh, ant.bat to run it as a script. Or you include ant.jar in your distro and use your own wrapper scripts to call it. In the end, though, the best reason I've found to do as much as possible in Ant and write only the simplest wrapper scripts is that means you keep your code and build/deploy process as platform independent as possible which makes debugging a lot easier. You're right about importing default data. I can't really see any clever way to do this that is database agnostic. One idea is that you write a simple Main class that uses hibernate and your persistent classes to programmatically create the data. This in theory would then work for any database as well and could even be the start of unit testing with your persistent classes... My main point here though is I agree you don't want to force users to become developers, but it's even worse that users have to become DBA's. In my country a database admin usually gets paid more than a developer and requires more specialized skills ;-) Cheers, Jason

If you want to help you are welcome to. Ludovic Jason Novotny wrote:

Hi Ludovic, I've been looking at the instructions at http://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Main/InstallLinuxTomcat and there are about 8 steps too many for this software to gain widespread adoption in my opinion. One of the biggest issues I see is that it uses Hibernate which is great since technically db tables can be auto generated using the Hibernate schemaexport tool with the xwiki mapping file to create tables in any database of your choosing. However, it looks like I specifically need MySQL and I don't know why. I look at the JBoss + Postgres install page and sure enough it points out the flaws of this approach: "Download the sample database and convert for Postgres. See PostgresDatabase <http://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Dev/PostgresDatabase> -> This tool has been made by Nicholas Vesser.. It was done with an old mysql database for XWiki.. You should try it with the latest database.." hmm, not fun. Personally, what I would like to see is this: 1) Download xwiki.zip 2) Run "ant install" which performs: Creating/deploying xwiki webapp to your Tomcat that you set in your build.properties Uses schemaexport to generate tables in your database that is defined in the hibernate properties file 3) Start your server and voila! Further, it could use hsqldb as a default so if you didn't reconfigure the hibernate properties file it would simply use hsqldb which can be bundled with the wiki webapp and used for test purposes. How does this sound? Cheers, Jason ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- You receive this message as a subscriber of the xwiki-dev(a)objectweb.org mailing list. To unsubscribe: mailto:xwiki-dev-unsubscribe@objectweb.org For general help: mailto:sympa@objectweb.org?subject=help ObjectWeb mailing lists service home page: http://www.objectweb.org/wws

------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- You receive this message as a subscriber of the xwiki-dev(a)objectweb.org mailing list. To unsubscribe: mailto:xwiki-dev-unsubscribe@objectweb.org For general help: mailto:sympa@objectweb.org?subject=help ObjectWeb mailing lists service home page: http://www.objectweb.org/wws

-- Ludovic Dubost XPertNet: http://www.xpertnet.fr/ Blog: http://www.ludovic.org/blog/ XWiki: http://www.xwiki.com Skype: ldubost AIM: nvludo Yahoo: ludovic

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Ludovic Dubost

11:20 a.m.

New subject: [xwiki-dev] xwiki installation not too friendly

Hi Jason, We are trying to solve this.. We started by doing a windows only package embedding everything in a ready to go package. We also have an experimental (not release) package with Jetty and HSQLDb so there are no big dependencies. Jeremi is supposed to finish this but was busy on a Google Summer of Code project. He'll be able to wrap this up in September. We also have a backup (import/export) tools which we just released which can be adapted for initial import and installs in other environments. See http://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/AdminGuide/Backup There are one thing missing in your proposed approach which is loading the default data (the import tool can do this just after having done the schemaUpdate). There is one thing I don't like which is the dependency on ant. We need something that doesn't have this dependency. Many users are not developers and might not have ant. An shell script and a batch file running java is probably the way to go. If you want to help you are welcome to. Ludovic Jason Novotny wrote:

...

Hi Ludovic, I've been looking at the instructions at http://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Main/InstallLinuxTomcat and there are about 8 steps too many for this software to gain widespread adoption in my opinion. One of the biggest issues I see is that it uses Hibernate which is great since technically db tables can be auto generated using the Hibernate schemaexport tool with the xwiki mapping file to create tables in any database of your choosing. However, it looks like I specifically need MySQL and I don't know why. I look at the JBoss + Postgres install page and sure enough it points out the flaws of this approach: "Download the sample database and convert for Postgres. See PostgresDatabase <http://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Dev/PostgresDatabase> -> This tool has been made by Nicholas Vesser.. It was done with an old mysql database for XWiki.. You should try it with the latest database.." hmm, not fun. Personally, what I would like to see is this: 1) Download xwiki.zip 2) Run "ant install" which performs: Creating/deploying xwiki webapp to your Tomcat that you set in your build.properties Uses schemaexport to generate tables in your database that is defined in the hibernate properties file 3) Start your server and voila! Further, it could use hsqldb as a default so if you didn't reconfigure the hibernate properties file it would simply use hsqldb which can be bundled with the wiki webapp and used for test purposes. How does this sound? Cheers, Jason ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- You receive this message as a subscriber of the xwiki-dev(a)objectweb.org mailing list. To unsubscribe: mailto:xwiki-dev-unsubscribe@objectweb.org For general help: mailto:sympa@objectweb.org?subject=help ObjectWeb mailing lists service home page: http://www.objectweb.org/wws

-- Ludovic Dubost XPertNet: http://www.xpertnet.fr/ Blog: http://www.ludovic.org/blog/ XWiki: http://www.xwiki.com Skype: ldubost AIM: nvludo Yahoo: ludovic

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