[arch-general] let's discuss /srv again

[Dieter Plaetinck]

On Fri, 2 Oct 2009 10:47:24 +0300
Roman Kyrylych <roman.kyrylych at gmail.com> wrote:

> 2009/10/2 Sergej Pupykin <pupykin.s at gmail.com>:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I want to discuss using /srv directory in packages
> >
> > (For reference: http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/16410)
> >
> > Of course I can easy sed and rebuild all my web packages, but I
> > want to know reason why we disable /srv in packages?
> 
> IMO web apps should not even be packed as packages.
> It's easy to download sources from an official site and install
> in whatever user's webserver directory is.
> Yes, packaging a webapp is nice for automatic upgrading with pacman,
> but users can have multiple web servers with multiple vhosts in /srv,
> so often installing something there won't make it working anyway,
> and user will copy/move/symlink the app to whatever directory is
> right for user's webserver config scheme, which is against the idea
> that package files (except configs) should not be touched by user,
> but only by package manager.
> 
> > Would it be good if I replace /srv/http with /var/www/<package> or
> > something like this?
> 
> No, /var is not good either.
> I can think about something like /usr/share/src/<webapp>,
> but anyway that does not make much sense,
> comparing to just installing the sources manually. :-/
> 

well it would at least give you the advantage of easier seeing if there
are updates, updating, getting a list of installed webapps etc.

I'm fine with packaged webapps where the webapps are installed in a dir
which users are supposed to symlink to. so that it's still up to the
user, but they get the advantages listed above.

anything more then that gets icky: webapps come with config files,
default sql data, upon upgrade you usually need to do several steps
such as running a bunch of sql queries etc.  stuff that should probably
not be done automatically.

Dieter