[Kolab-devel] Autofoo Proposal

[Gunnar Wrobel]

Hi Jeroen,

Quoting "Jeroen van Meeuwen (Kolab Systems)" <vanmeeuwen at kolabsys.com>:

> Hello,
>
> I'm playing around with releasing, in full, the power of autofoo onto some of
> the Kolab packages.

"Some of the packages"? It would be restricted to kolabd, wouldn't it?  
At the moment kolab-webadmin is the only other package that still uses  
the dist_conf approach and that needs to be changed at some point.

>
> I came to this plan through dist_conf/ and OpenPKG, which I believe have a 1-
> to-1 relationship.
>
> Instead of using static dist_conf/* files, which turn outdated  
> rather quickly,
> are volatile and do not allow for any flexibility on the user end, I  
> wanted to
> use autoconf.
>
> Hence, I whipped up a Wiki page[1] explaining what I want to do and  
> how I want
> to get there.
>
> [1] https://wiki.kolab.org/index.php/Autoconf_Proposal

You are right and the dist_conf files are a problem as they configure  
the package for a specific server configuration *while building the  
package*. Not very flexible indeed and something that should be changed.

Another build time tool will not change the basic problem though. It  
will still configure the package while building it. The server  
configuration can easily be changed during runtime though. Yes, you  
can rebuild your kolabd package but to me a changed configuration  
should usually not result in a package rebuild. At least if no change  
in linking binaries is involved.

I'm also against auto-detecting the server configuration. The Kolab  
server configuration is quite complex and actually not very flexible  
when it comes to exchanging one of its components. LDAP has a certain  
amount of flexibility, the spam filter too, but exchanging apache will  
already be difficult. Exchanging postfix would seem impossible to me.

Having the system analyzing the server and trying to guess the  
intentions of the user might turn out to be problematic in many cases.  
I'd rather have the user tell the system what is desired by a few  
configuration variables in a central configuration file.

The easiest solution that I see for that is to remove the whole  
automake/dist_conf process and have no build time configuration of  
kolabd anymore. The only thing that should happen would be to detect  
the distribution and install the default configuration from dist_conf  
in /etc/kolab/kolab.globals. This would then be used by kolabconf to  
generate the template configuration during runtime *only*.

This has already been started to a certain degree but not yet  
completed. perl-kolab used to rely on the dist_conf approach, too. And  
all of its configuration variables nowadays live in the kolab.globals  
file in kolabd. The restructured perl-kolab is a simple perl package  
now that can be easily build and installed by any package management  
system. It's configuration only happens during runtime.

As mentioned I agree with you that the dist_conf approach is  
problematic for packaging Kolab natively. I have been on a path to  
remove it step by step from the Kolab server during the last years.  
I'd just like to continue that path and if its something that hinders  
you in packaging Kolab natively then it is something we might rather  
tackle sooner than later.

Cheers,

Gunnar



>
> --
> Jeroen van Meeuwen
> Senior Engineer, Kolab Systems AG
>
> e: vanmeeuwen at kolabsys.com
> t: +316 42 801 403
> w: http://www.kolabsys.com
>
> pgp: 9342 BF08
>
> _______________________________________________
> Kolab-devel mailing list
> Kolab-devel at kolab.org
> https://kolab.org/mailman/listinfo/kolab-devel
>



-- 
______ http://kdab.com _______________ http://kolab-konsortium.com _

p at rdus Kolab work is funded in part by KDAB and the Kolab Konsortium

____ http://www.pardus.de _________________ http://gunnarwrobel.de _
E-mail : p at rdus.de                                 Dr. Gunnar Wrobel
Tel.   : +49 700 6245 0000                          Bundesstrasse 29
Fax    : +49 721 1513 52322                          D-20146 Hamburg
--------------------------------------------------------------------
    >> Mail at ease - Rent a kolab groupware server at p at rdus <<
--------------------------------------------------------------------