Re: [be] Packages (bibledit-web and build time mysql server checking)

[Jonathan Marsden]

Teus,

On 12/25/2010 06:50 AM, Teus Benschop wrote:

> Is there any news about packing bibledit-web? 

I started on this today.  I soon encountered something I am not sure how
to handle -- bibledit-web seems to expect a working and configured mysql
server at *build* time.

This seems unusual; I can understand needing a MySQL server at run time,
but not at build time.  I should be able to compile and install (and
package) bibletime-web without a MySQL server, shouldn't I?

The Debian and Ubuntu builder machines do not provide MySQL servers
during the build process.  Even if they did, those might well be
different (and configured differently) from the mysql server seen by the
app when the package is installed on a user's machine at some later point.

I would expect that the build process just builds and installs the
application; there would usually also be a default configuration file
which can be edited to specify where the database server is, username
and password, etc.  In the Debian/Ubuntu packaging world, initial
settings for these would be done using debconf, so the user gets a
dialog asking for them at install time.

I hope the database server/name/username/password information is not
being hardcoded into the application itself during the build?  Surely
the right place for that kind of info is a separate configuration file?

I could try to patch out the checks for the MySQL server done by your
configure script... but then I feel I'm basically working 'against' the
developers intentions instead of with them!  You (presumably) put those
checks in there at build time for a reason... I just don't know what the
reason is.

phpmysqladmin (your suggested example existing packaged web app) does
not do this kind of thing during its build process.

Incidentally, longer term, you might want to consider using a database
abstraction layer (PEAR MDB2 for example) so that bibledit-web can use
Postgresql or other database back ends, not just MySQL.

Thoughts, ideas and suggestions welcomed :)

Jonathan