Re: [Scrollkeeper-devel] ScrollKeeper-0.1 Proposal #3

[Laszlo K. <las...@su...>]

> > This would pose a significant problem.  The original design installed each
> > document with something like:
> >
> >     scrollkeeper-install <omffile> <doc>
> 
> I think that's probably a bad idea.  Each OS is going to have its own idea
> of what program to use to physically install the document, and set the
> ownership and permissions properly.  I don't see much point in reinventing
> install(1) or cp(1).

This is a misunderstanding. It is an addition to install and cp, not a
reinvention. It installs the doc into the Scrollkeeper database after it
was installed with install or cp to the right location.

> I think it's probably better to provide a scrollkeeper configuration
> file (in XML would be nice :-) ) that describes a list of paths down
> which scrollkeeper (sk from now on) should recurse to look for new
> documentation.
There will be some solution in the future to extend the one directory
where metadata files are now to a set of directories. This is for
metadata only, Scrollkeeper intends to support cataloging of docs based
anywhere locally and on the web, this is why we thought the metadata
should contain the url.
 
> Most package systems should provide a mechanism to call scrollkeeper-install
> after a document has been added to the system, ideally with the path in
> which the document was installed.  For those that don't, the system can
> run something periodically that re-indexes the list of installed
> documentation, in the same way that the apropos database is built at the
> moment.
The problem with this is that packagers will have to create large
postinstall scripts to get it working right and some of the people on
this list think they will not do it if the changes are not as simple as
possible. If we disregard the packagers possible reaction then most/all
of the Scrollkeeper related process should be launched from postinstall
scripts. But as I said some people strongly opposed that.

> Depends how well written the package is.  Most of the FreeBSD ports install
> with $PREFIX set to something other than /usr/local with no problems.
> 
> Also, keep in mind that some of these packages are going to consist of
> nothing but documentation.
> 
> For example, *right now*, a FreeBSD user can do something like
> 
>     pkg_add -r -p /opt/share/doc \
>       ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/doc/packages/handbook.en_US.ISO_8859-1.html.tgz
> 
> This will download the HTML version of the English FreeBSD handbook, and
> install it under /opt/share/doc (instead of the more usual /usr/share/doc).
> 
> Now, pkg_add in FreeBSD has hooks to allow post-install scripts to be
> run, that could call an sk command to update the index.  But the sysadmin
> should also be free to create /usr/local/etc/scrollkeeper.cf, and make sure
> that "/opt/share/doc/" is listed as a directory to be indexed.
This suggestion does work only if the doc is locally installed, what if
I point to a page on the web, where the document is? 


Laszlo