deb packages

[igrnt]

(25-11-2015 18:11)simoncn Wrote:  I don't understand why the VortexBox approach wouldn't work for an OMV plugin. The OMV page would load the MinimServer page (passing the download type that it wants) and the MinimServer page would prompt the user and then invoke the OMV page with the correct URL for download. If the user doesn't click one of the buttons on the MinimServer page, the installation wouldn't happen.

I have some other concerns about creating .deb packages that duplicate the contents of the current .tar.gz packages:

1) The current packaging structure of MinimServer (code and configuration data in the same parent folder) is not the usual structure of a .deb package.

2) As well as the initial effort required to develop the .deb package, I would need need to build and test 5 more downloads every time there is a new release. This is a significant amount of extra work.

3) Having two different packages available for Debian Linux (.deb and .tar.gz) would be confusing for users as it wouldn't be clear which one they should use. It would also require me to create and maintain duplicate documentation covering these two options.

4) The current .tar.gz package is intentionally not tied to Debian. This was a deliberate choice to enable MinimServer to be installed on a wide range of Linux distributions . If I produce a Debian-specific package, users of other distributions will want specific packages for these distributions as well.

5) The minimserver/bin/update command enables the user to install a new release without losing his/her configuration and installed extensions. It's not clear how this would be supported if the user installs a new version of the .deb package. (This is related to point 1.)

6) The minimserver/bin scripts support installing and running multiple instances of MinimServer in different directories. This couldn't easily be done with a .deb package because this would install MinimServer in a specific directory.

It might be possible to find solutions for all the above (and any more that might come up) but I don't have the bandwidth at the present time to spend on this. Instead, I would like to ask you to consider whether your OMV plugin could download and unpack the .tar.gz package instead of using the .deb dependency mechanism to download MinimServer. This is what VortexBox is doing.

I understand your concerns, most importantly the extra work required. Note that I'm not asking you to create and maintain deb packages - I can and would have done this myself just for OMV, but I got the impression that the licence prohibits this. So my question is: would you be happy to allow this?

This immediately resolves your issues 1-4.
It should (would) also satisfy issue 5.
I don't consider issue 6 to be a problem - if an OMV user wanted to do this, they would be free to go 'off-piste', but the OMV plugin wouldn't support it. In any case, such a situation requires some customization, no? The init scripts don't start multiple instances, do they?

Of course, ultimately I will respect your wishes, and if I have to do it similar to the VortexBox way I will.