Re: [webmin-devel] packaged vs local modules

[Jamie C. <jca...@we...>]

On Wed, 2004-06-02 at 02:46, Jaldhar H. Vyas wrote:
> On Tue, 1 Jun 2004, Jamie Cameron wrote:
> 
> > I think the best solution here is for the Debian package of Webmin to
> > always ensure that packages from apt are used when installing core
> > modules, rather than normal .wbm files. This would mean modifying the
> > CGIs that handle module and theme installation, to detect if the Debian
> > package is in use and to refuse to install a module if an apt package
> > for it exists.
> >
> > The code for installing a standard module and updating modules could
> > also be modified to install with apt-get, or perhaps removed altogether.
> > What do you think?
> >
> 
> Yes that is possible.  But Martin explained why simply disabling the
> ability to install is not something users would like.

I wasn't thinking of totally disabling module installation, just
preventing it for modules with have .deb packages (the core modules).

> Debian policy declares /usr/local to be off-limits to .deb packages.  This
> is why I suggested two module roots.   If packaged modules installed
> into /usr/share webmin (which I handle now in my packages) while locally
> installed modules installed into /usr/local/share/webmin, We could
> guarantee that neither would stomp over the other.  And the configuration
> which currently goes into /etc/webmin could go into /usr/local/etc/webmin
> Of course all four places would be configurable variables so a user of
> the tarball could arrange them anyway he wanted.

Having two root directories is neat, but may confuse some modules. A lot
of them are written to assume that all module directories lie under the
same root, and access files in other modules with paths like
../othermodule/somefile.pl . This could be fixed for the core modules,
but may break third-party code ..

I still think having one root directory is best, as long as there is no
possibility of modules from .deb packages being overwritten, which seems
to be the core problem here.

 - Jamie