[Kolab-devel] Debian Packages for Kolab

[Paul Boddie]

On Thursday 24. October 2013 21.37.34 Timotheus Pokorra wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> in general, I think the first step is to maintain the existing Kolab
> debian packages, so that they work with the default packages (389
> dirsrv, Cyrus, etc) as it works on CentOS. The other step, to be more
> flexible regarding which software to use, would not just be a task for
> Debian, but in general for other distributions as well.

It actually didn't appear to be as bad as I thought: the LDAP and IMAP 
dependencies seem to be generic (kolab-ldap requires "389-ds | ldap-server", 
kolab-imap requires "cyrus-imapd (>= 2.4) | imap-server"), and it's only the 
MTA and SQL-related things that are more specific.

And I know not to get involved with making SQL-based software database-system-
independent. Or at least not without some serious contemplation. ;-)

> For a reinstall script on Debian, I have been using this:
> https://gist.github.com/tpokorra/7113076

I imagine that this might come in handy, thanks! And thanks to Georg and 
Richard for the encouragement.

What I've tried to do so far is to look at rebuilding the packages and 
installing them in a chroot for wheezy. I did start to try this for sid, too, 
but there seems to be a regression in sid that makes pbuilder non-functional 
at the moment. I then hope to get a reasonable idea of how flexible the 
dependencies are.

I did look at your (Timotheus') description of OBS, but I'm not sure I'm ready 
to start branching and patching. Instead, I'll try working as I've done before 
with Debian packaging and see where I end up.	Maybe I'll try and submit 
patches via OBS so that you can benefit from them, if I get that far, of 
course.

> On 24 October 2013 21:30, Richard <ml at radoeka.nl> wrote:
> > 
> > Have a look at the scripts (in this case the ones ending at .sh) located
> > at:
> > 
> > https://build.opensuse.org/package/show/server:Kolab:UNSTABLE/kolab-
scripts

This looks like a reasonable strategy...

> > Those scripts are called by the script kolab-pre-setup. The script can be
> > run as often as you like, until everything is configured as it should
> > (the script is to prepare the distribution for a kolab-installation, it
> > is not the installation itself).

In my experience of complicated configuration, the interactive route usually 
ends up being rather frustrating, and it's hardly ever the case that people 
giving answers at interactive prompts prefer this to configuration files, at 
least when you start to have lots of questions and also find yourself changing 
your mind half way through. ;-)

So establishing a sensible basis for configuration first and then having 
setup-kolab (or equivalent) just verifying and using it might make a lot of 
sense.

> > This is a link to the rpm providing the script mentioned above.
> > 
> > Hopefully you can (re-)use parts of it.

I'll certainly take a closer look at this, thanks!

Paul