25 May
2012
25 May
'12
7:12 p.m.
On May 25, 2012, at 12:31 PM, Denis Gervalle wrote:
Note that for Debian installed I simply set the right directory in
xwiki.cfg/xwiki.properties.
Why not doing the same for the Windows installation ?
If you means, because the configuration file are on the read-only part of
your installation, then your need is to have local configuration files for
users. This is absolutely not the same issue.
This proposal is independent of installers (I mentioned I'll send a separate email for
installers). The idea here was for me to propose a solution that works without installers.
Supporting installers is ok and installers would be able to set the XWIKI_DATA env
variable by asking questions to you, whether you wish an install for all users, just for
your users, check if there's already some xwiki installs at the specified dir, etc.
Thanks
-Vincent
PS: Seen the various answers, I've probably not expressed myself very clearly. I
apologize for that and I hope it's more clear from my various answers. If not,
I'll resend a more general email with the goal so that at least we start by agreeing
with the goal (i.e. separate data from binaries - I thought it was a give but maybe
that's not the case).
On Fri, May 25, 2012 at 11:32 AM, Thomas Mortagne
<thomas.mortagne(a)xwiki.com
Funny :) Tomcat uses environment variables so if you don't set those rights you
don't even get XWiki ;)
So the solution is simple: you create a start script for your application (start_xwiki.sh
for ex) and inside it you set the XWIKI_DATA directory).
wrote:
> On Fri, May 25, 2012 at 8:16 AM, Vincent Massol <vincent(a)massol.net>
wrote:
>> Hi devs,
>>
>> Since I'm working on making XE work in Windows7 I've thought more about
> XWiki's install and configuration. Actually this is not a new topic, I
> remember starting a discussion about it a few years ago on the devs list
> but we didn't act on it so here it comes again ;)
>>
>> Rationale
>> ========
>>
>> The idea is to separate XWiki's binaries from its data. There are
> several reasons for wanting this:
>>
>> * Some OSes require this and don't allow writing in the binary
> directory. Windows 7 for example won't allow writing data in \Program Files.
>> * It makes upgrading simpler since you don't need to fish for
> configuration data and copy them somewhere before unpacking a new
> distribution over. Or if you unpack in a new directory you don't need to
> copy the data from the old directory to the new one.
>> * As a consequence of the previous point It allows easier auto upgrades
> of XE
>> * It makes it simpler to know what to backup: all you need to back is
> the data directory.
>>
>> Proposal
>> =======
>>
>> This is the simplest I've found (I've imagine a lot of more complex
> options which offer other small possibilities but in the end I went for the
> simpler one for now). So here goes the process when starting up XE:
>>
>> * XE looks for a XWIKI_DATA environment variable and if found it uses it
> as its environment.permanentDirectory value
>
> Why not XWIKI_PERMANENTDIRECTORY since that's how we call it in XWiki ?
>
>> * If not found, XE looks in the user home directory for an XWiki
> directory. Now the name of this directory is environment-dependent. On non
> windows systems it looks for ".xwiki" directory and on Windows systems it
> looks for a "XWiki" directory.
>> * If not found, then XE stops and prints a message in the console
> explaining that it couldn't find the location of the XWiki Data dir with
> explanations on how to set it.
>>
>> The recommendation is thus that users set the XWIKI_DATA environment
> property.
>
I do not like this so much.
If you use filesystem attachement, properly locating this directory is
crucial, and leaving it to an environment variable is risky, IMO. Notes:
* At startup XE prints as an INFO log the location of the permanent dir
it is
using.
* For the standalone distribution we would set
the XWIKI_DATA env
variable in the xwiki start file (start_xwiki.sh and
start_xwiki.bat) to
point to the data/ dir in the distribution.
* One aspect that is not covered here yet (the
topic for another email):
the installer. I'll prepare another mail for that
since it's independent
for me.
>> Use cases
>> =========
>>
>> This allows the following use cases:
>>
>> * Make it easy to upgrade XE
>> * Make it easy to backup XE
>> * MAke it easy to use an existing XE install but point it to a different
> configuration, for testing purposes for ex
>> * Allow installing XE for all users on a system
>> * Allow installing XE for my user only
>>
>> WDYT?
>>
>> Thanks
>> -Vincent