[Live-demo] Packaging and project re-organization

[Alex Mandel]

On 01/02/2014 12:37 PM, James Klassen wrote:
> On 2013/12/31 4:18 PM, Alex Mandel wrote:
>> Keep in mind that our installation method does double duty, not only
>> installing an application but also as a guide for how to install such an
>> application (I use the postgis script all the time for this). So
>> inventing a new way to install applications that is not the norm for a
>> known project needs to be easier and better than the current common method.
>>
> 
> This is the biggest hurdle I am facing with packaging GeoMoose as a .deb.
> 
> As GeoMoose is primarily HTML/JS and some PHP, there is nothing to
> build.  There is some advantage to listing dependencies of the various
> components in a .deb.  The demo app provides a working example of how
> all these pieces (plus external dependencies such as MapServer and
> Apache) can be used together with some example data.  My trouble is that
> this is just one way the pieces can be used to build a whole.  For
> example, using Nginx instead of Apache or using something other than
> MapServer to serve WMS.
> 
> The demo is important to our users because many of them want to start
> with something that works and incrementally substitute in their data.
> Thus, the way people typically install GeoMoose is to install the demo
> as a base (.zip or more ideally clone from GitHub) and start
> configuring/customizing to their liking.  It is typical to have multiple
> GeoMoose instances (possibly of differing versions) on one server.  The
> install_geomoose.sh script as is does a good job of documenting general
> steps someone could follow to install GeoMoose on any Un*x style machine
> (assuming they can manually translate "apt-get install" to the local
> package manager).  For the casual user, a .deb is much more opaque in
> terms of understanding what is going on.

Well so you do need a webserver with php modules installed. That is a
good use of the control file. So you can put a required Apache or Nginx
(whichever listed first is the preferred if neither are present. Then if
you put Mapserver in the Recommends I think Ubuntu would automatically
install it but allow for mapserver to be removed without removing geomoose.

The package could also include or pull a second package which is the
demo instance.

FYI, deb file sources do contain the Post Install script which would
look almost the same as the current install script.

Thanks,
Alex