[sword-devel] Remote Module Repository Wiki

[Matthew Talbert]

rote:
> "Troy A. Griffitts" <scribe at crosswire.org> writes:
>> Matthew Talbert had a great suggestion on IRC last night to simply add
>> a 'prep for publishing' (or in his words simply "publish") option to
>> the InstallMgr interface...
>
> It's great, but funny, to see all the sudden interest in publishing
> users' content.  I've talked about it a couple times here in
> sword-devel, but the idea never got any traction before.  Why now?
>
> Nearly 3 years ago:
> http://www.crosswire.org/pipermail/sword-devel/2008-January/026736.html

Part of this concept of "publish" was not really pushing to a remote
repository, but the idea that we could (say using the Xiphos module
manager) pick a subset of installed modules, and prepare them for
remote access. If, for example, we were to agree that an HTTP
repository could consist of a single file listing the contents
(really, no different than mods.tar.gz) + a set of zipped files, then
this "publish" would create this whole directory, ready for simply
copying to any http-accessible location.

The other part of the publish would be publishing a single module to a
remote location where a user has an account. This would be very
similar, but it would just be pushing a single zip file, and the
remote server would be responsible for putting it in the correct
location, and updating the repository listing.

Part of why I'd like very much to see a repository able to consist of
this directory listing + zipped modules is that it makes the whole
idea of remote publishing much easier. With FTP, it's a pain to set up
various directories with different permission schemes on the fly,
while using HTTP would allow typical server-side software (eg, PHP,
django, etc) to handle rather complex schemes easily. It would be
relatively simple on the same server to have a system that allowed a
user to come sign up for an account, and suddenly that user has
publish capability unique to him. Then, if he wanted to publish to a
more shared and publicly visible location, a simple flip of the switch
would allow him to publish there as well. This would allow everyone to
quickly share with their friends, but require interaction with a
repository owner before being allowed to publish there.

Matthew