Re: [xwiki-devs] [Proposal] XWiki's Permanent Directory Strategy for Installations

On Fri, May 25, 2012 at 11:32 AM, Thomas Mortagne <thomas.mortagne(a)xwiki.com > On Fri, May 25, 2012 at 8:16 AM, Vincent Massol <vincent(a)massol.net> > > 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. 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. -- Denis Gervalle SOFTEC sa - CEO eGuilde sarl - CTO