[Openinteract-dev] an OpenInteract direction: management interface and single website

[Chris W. <ch...@cw...>]

I've been working lately on importing/exporting data using SPOPS (out
soon) and wanted to replace OpenInteract::SQLInstall with the results,
making it just a wrapper around the necessary SPOPS::Import classes.

Unfortunately, this got me thinking about oi_manage. I try not to think
about it too much because I have this irrational (?) need to clean it
up, factor things out, etc. But it basically works now so I'm loathe to
mess with it.

But then I thought about it a little too much, and had some initial
ideas about how to rewrite it. This is a good thing.

Unfortunately, this got me thinking about the issue we touched on
briefly a couple weeks ago [1] about the base installation directory.
The original point of the thing was so that multiple websites could run
in a single mod_perl process and share code.

But that's a questionable point as I'm strongly leaning toward a
one-website/one-process model for a number of reasons. First, it will
simplify a number of issues -- off the top of my head: deployment, site
management, conceptualization, packaging, configuration and resource
management. Second, it will make the task of running OpenInteract as a
standalone process much easier. (Getting it running standalone will be
one of my New Year's resolutions, BTW :-)

So instead of doing the OI install and then applying/upgrading packages
from there, you'd just create a new website and upgrade those packages
directly, eliminating the middle step entirely. The only version of the
packages that the website knows about would be in the website itself.
(Unsure about whether a website should still be a namespace, but that's
minor.)

I floated this idea back in July [2] and the response was minimal, so
I'm inclined to just go ahead and plow forward. But this is a 'speak now
or forever hold your peace' sort of thing...

Thanks,

Chris

[1] http://www.geocrawler.com/lists/3/SourceForge/8429/0/7359734/
[2] http://www.geocrawler.com/archives/3/8393/2001/7/0/

-- 
Chris Winters (ch...@cw...)
Building enterprise-capable snack solutions since 1988.