RPM Style solution for php software?

[Kenneth Porter]

--On Monday, November 21, 2005 8:21 AM +0100 Andy Pieters 
<mailings at vlaamse-kern.com> wrote:

I wish more PHP packagers paid attention to this. I salute you for 
researching this. I'd recommend the fedora-packaging list and the rpm 
developers list for more help.

> 1. The location of where the files in the package are installed is fixed
> in  the rpm

That's a Good Thing. It standardizes the install so support is easy. Site 
customization should NOT be in the installation directory. Site-wide 
customization can be in a subdirectory of /etc or /var and per-user 
customization can go in one's home directory. Ideally a single copy of your 
package can serve many virtual hosts by simply changing a config variable 
in Apache's virtual host stanza to point at a different set of config files.

> 2. Many packages require updates to the database, which means that a php
> cli  with mysql support must be available on the system.

The package should include a Requires on the MySQL package that contains 
the components you need. Then use a %post script to apply the changes.

You could also design your DB update to be initiated by the admin interface 
of the site's web page, which would allow each virtual host to update its 
own database. How you trigger this depends on your app.

> 3. In case of a first install, information needs to be collected about
> the  environment and user/password stuff.

RPM is not intended to be interactive. It is used to load packages when the 
entire system is installed without an admin present. It can also be used to 
automatically update a system in the middle of the night (eg. via yum or 
Red Hat up2date). If you need first-time customization, it should be done 
after installation and before or during first use. See the Mozilla package 
for one example of the latter.

For an example of a package that does what you want, look at Mailman. It's 
web-based and supplies most of the initial configuration, but the admin 
must still finalize it before deployment.