Gentoo Archives: gentoo-dev

From: Matthew Summers <quantumsummers@g.o>
To: gentoo-dev@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] Reviving webapp-config
Date: Fri, 10 Jun 2011 15:39:34
Message-Id: BANLkTim6mx_D646Y2Y3iXRbpAM03HbgY8w@mail.gmail.com
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-dev] Reviving webapp-config by Sebastian Pipping
1 On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 6:49 AM, Sebastian Pipping <sping@g.o> wrote:
2 > Questions:
3 >
4 >  - What does reviving mean in detail?
5 >     A re-write?  A somewhat compatible re-write?
6
7 I am not necessarily interested in a complete re-write unless its
8 really warranted due to support for new features. First things first,
9 webapp-config needs to have the open bugs addressed and current
10 functionality should be supported.
11
12 >     Getting back to maintaining the current code?
13
14 There is some good code in there, so I think at minimum some of that
15 will be maintained moving forward. Regardless, the current codebase
16 should be audited, bugs fixed, and a new design spec incorporating the
17 new features desired needs to be written in collaboration with various
18 stake holders.
19
20
21 >     Why did you choose how you did?
22
23 I do not understand this sentence, but will try to explain the choices
24 a bit. Having used webapp-config for 7 years or so, I had grown fond
25 of it for managing things like drupal (back in the day) and for
26 handling static media for my company projects. As time progressed, it
27 seemed reasonable to extend the functionality of w-c to do fancier
28 things like change tracking or byte-compiling python modules outside
29 of site-packages for multi-instance and potentially multi-versioned
30 deployments of the various pythonic webapps I manage. It seems
31 reasonable to roll this sort of functionality into the existing tool.
32 I am not intending to make this something specific to python webapps,
33 just to be clear, but include tools to handle webapps written in
34 ruby/rails, perl, etc.
35
36 Additionally, Gentoo's infra team uses w-c for a few things and its a
37 nice tool that mostly integrates well into cfengine (afaik). Whatever
38 the case with automation, it does make management tasks easier
39 (perhaps IMO).
40
41 Further, there are substantial applications, like Moodle, that would
42 benefit from a more robust deployment toolkit within Gentoo.
43
44 So, in general, from both a distribution and a professional
45 perspective its quite clear (at least to me), that this tool has an
46 important role in Gentoo and therefore needs to be revived.
47
48 >
49 >  - Have you spoken to Andreas Nüsslein who worked on a
50 >   re-write in context of an earlier GSoC?
51
52 I have not. I was unaware of this project until it was mentioned in
53 replies to this thread. I have started reading the code. Perhaps there
54 are some elements of Andreas' code we can incorporate into the w-c
55 codebase. I need to dig into the code far more than my cursory glance.
56
57 >
58 > Best,
59 >
60 >
61 >
62 >
63 > Sebastian
64 >
65 >
66
67 Good questions Sebastian, thanks.
68
69 Matthew W. Summers
70 Gentoo Foundation Inc.

Replies

Subject Author
Re: [gentoo-dev] Reviving webapp-config Sebastian Pipping <sping@g.o>