Serendipity Forums

[clander]

I have been looking at Serendipity recently and decided to create a script to automate some of the tasks to create a shared install.

The script uses bash, and was developed on my SuSE 9.3 box. I also have tested and used it succesfully on my SuSE 10.0 box.

You can find my effort here (http://www.labbs.com/~clander/s9y_conf/)

I hope this script will make it easier for others to create their shared install environment, and suspect that it could also be useful to developers repeatedly recreating their environment during testing.

Feddback, comments, and feature requests may result in further development...

[garvinhicking]

Hi Clander!

Wow, that is a great script. Even though I personally don't use the shared install script, often people have requested something like this.

Many thanks for sharing it! Would it be okay for you if I link to your page within the Wiki documentation of the shared installation?

Best regards,
Garvin

[clander]

Garvin,

You are welcome to link to the script, just bear in mind that it is served from my home machine via a cable modem (so it may be little slow to respond at times!)...

You should find my page for the script here http://www.labbs.com/~clander/s9y_conf

Your project got my mind working as I wanted to create multiple installs for S9Y on lander.me.uk (family politics etal.), the impetus was there to write the script and (supposedly) reduce the admin overhead.

I have also created an SVN repository on my home server for s9y_conf which currrently should also be viewable via http://www.labbs.com/viewcvs/?root=s9y_conf. There you will find a branch/tags/trunk structure as sugested by SVN. Releases are under /tags, development under /trunk.

On request I can hopefully make it possible for others to join in development of the script (i.e.checkout/commit). Essentially It is all part of the computing fun to work out how to do these things for us 'amateurs'.

I envision rewriting the script in PERL just to satisfy myself, which may make it more useful cross-platform, along with other enhacements (e.g. command line arguments for functions).

Overall if you think it useful for others then please feel free to include it in your distribution, as far as I am concerned it is suitable for public consumption.

With 'public consumption' in mind I suppose I should have a serious read of the GPL license or Creative Commons license (and include it in the distribution), so that everyone can know in what circumstances it can be used. Do you have any suggestions/advice ?

Best regards

Mercury_Labbs

[garvinhicking]

Hi Clander!

About your home server being used, I could make two suggestions:

1. Either we could mirror your script on the s9y.org server to be downloaded there or

2. We could give you SVN or CVS access to the serendipity code so that you could maintain your code on our source code control servers? Then the latest file could always be linked from our servers...

About possibility 2, CVS is used for our plugins usually and they can contain any license you want. SVN core however is distributed as BSD, which you might not want to use.

I am not a big license guy at all, so I can hardly suggest anything to you about that, I'm sorry. I just think that if I had started Serendipity, I would've licensed it as GPL and not BSD.

Best regards,
Garvin

[clander]

Garvin,

About your home server being used, I could make two suggestions:

1. Either we could mirror your script on the s9y.org server to be downloaded there or

Mirroring would certainly be possible, but in my experience often requires a lot of understanding between the people involved to ensure each one knows what is required of them etc., which does lead to confusion at times...

2. We could give you SVN or CVS access to the serendipity code so that you could maintain your code on our source code control servers? Then the latest file could always be linked from our servers...

About possibility 2, CVS is used for our plugins usually and they can contain any license you want. SVN core however is distributed as BSD, which you might not want to use.

That sounds a lot more practical, and would also allow other trusted people to join in with any further development.

Long term I have ideas for how it could be improved, as I said above, and a useful 'side effect' would be the availability of the current version at the S9Y site.

I have almost no experience in practical terms of using CVS/SVN systems in 'the real world', the only experience I have is with SVN through my own server setup. Having said that, the concept of being able to revisit/roll-back to previous versions of files is great!, and something that I can REALLY see the potential of...

If you can create a suitable account/tree at your SVN repository that would be appreciated. I'm sure it won't take me too long to work out how to commit and checkout files from/to my end. KDEsvn seems to do a reasonable job on my SuSE 10.0 box, and I am also becoming more conversant with the svn command line utility on SuSE 9.3.

I am not a big license guy at all, so I can hardly suggest anything to you about that, I'm sorry. I just think that if I had started Serendipity, I would've licensed it as GPL and not BSD.

OK I 'kicked the cat' (I had a choice of two!) at the 'dartboard', and plumped for GPL. It may not be the only option, but in reality this is a script intended to ease S9Y setup and NOT something that will be in everyday use by a sysadmin.

Would this prohibit doing things via your SVN server?

Best regards

Chris Lander

[garvinhicking]

Hi Clander!

Thanks for your positive feedback! Since you want to have GPL licensing (which is perfectly fine!), we should best put your script into CVS. That is a central place where we have all the other plugins and stuff, so it should be fine there. The CVS is similar to SVN in its command, so you shouldn't havea problem with that.

To commit to the repository, you need to register a username at www.sourceforge.net and tell me your name, so that I can enable your write access to our "additional_plugins" repository.

Best regards and thanks for your commitment,
Garvin