Re: [gentoo-dev] Interaction in ebuilds - bad idea?

[Stuart Herbert]

On Thursday 29 April 2004 22:04, Ajai Khattri wrote:
> Let's say I have an ebuild that uses mysql. Somewhere is a place for you
> to specify the host, db name, username and password for MySQL during the
> build process. If I wanted to ask the user that info, then what is the
> standard way of doing that? (Or am I using the wrong paradigm?).
>
> (Yes, Im working on a patch that uses mysql).

Right now, there's no standard way.  Most ebuilds assume that you're accessing 
mysql using 'mysql -u root' on the localhost.  I've seen at least one which 
prompts for these details - and makes a complete pigs ear of it.

There's a whole heap of work that we need to do to improve the way ebuilds 
work with databases.  It's something I intend to do once webapp-config is 
bedded in and stable for most people, because it's desperately needed for 
many web-based applications.

Here's the points I want to tackle include:

* standard way for ebuilds to interact with database servers locally
* support for ebuilds to work with a remote database server
* standard way for ebuilds to install new databases
  - naming schemes for databases
  - naming schemes for users that apps use
* a standard way to automate upgrading databases when we upgrade apps
  - auto-generation of SQL upgrade scripts
    (we can't rely on UPSTREAM to provide them)
* a standard way to automate removing databases when we remove apps
  - what do we remove
  - when do we remove it
* hooks so that we can add new databases to backup schemes automatically
  - oh the fun ;-)

I think we need to put a design down as a GLEP, as introducing the tool or 
tools to do all of this will impact users and devs alike.

Thoughts, comments?  Anyone interested in helping out on this?

Best regards,
Stu
-- 
Stuart Herbert                                              stuart@g.o
Gentoo Developer                                       http://www.gentoo.org/
Missed the php|cruise?             http://dev.gentoo.org/~stuart/cruise-2004/

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