Re: [webmin-devel] packaged vs local modules

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

On Tue, 2004-06-01 at 22:10, Jaldhar H. Vyas wrote:
> A big problem I have as the Debian packages of webmin/usermin is dealing
> with locally installed modules.  The ability to install an updated WBM is
> a good idea especially for the times when I fall behind in packaging but
> it can also cause problems.  The package management system doesn't know if
> you're going behind its back.  It can overwrite your stuff or not be aware
> its installed.

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?

> I wonder if it would be possible to do something like perl does for
> modules.  You can define installation spaces for core (comes with perl)
> vendor (i.e. packaged by a distro) and site (for stuff you download
> yoursef from CPAN.)  Webmin would probably only need two tiers.  How hard
> would it be to have miniserv look for modules in two places?  What else
> would need to be changed?

This could perhaps be done under miniserv, but it would break the
support for running Webmin under Apache. So I think a better solution is
to divide modules into two groups - 'core' and 'third-party', and ensure
that only third-party modules are installed from .wbm files.

 - Jamie