[Koha-devel] packaging of koha

[Tonnesen Steve]

Okay, I've started working on making Debian packages of Koha.  Since I'm a
Debian user, that's my packaging system of choice.  Alien should be able
to make good rpm packages out of the deb packages.

On to my ponderings:

I've got the packages installing the following so far:


/usr/share/koha/intranet/cgi-bin/koha/   (contains all the scripts)
/usr/share/koha/intranet/htdocs  (contains the intranet html and imgs)

/usr/share/koha/opac/cgi-bin/koha/
/usr/share/koha/opac/htdocs/

/usr/lib/perl5/C4/   (Contains the C4 modules)

/etc/koha.conf



Still to be done:

1.  Either create and populate, or update existing Koha mysql table.
  a.  Initial population of the database may be tricky.  I really think we
      need web-interfaces to more of the MySQL.  Things like itemtypes, in
      particular, should be editable by the librarians directly. 
  a.  We need a system for updating the tables with new releases.  Things
      like adding in new tables, or adding new fields to existing tables.
      I've handled this in the past by creating a version table that holds
      a version number for the table.  The version number is the same as
      the koha release number.  A script can then check the version number
      of the existing database and make all modifications necessary to
      bring the database up to date with the current release.  (ie if
      installing v 1.5, and current database is v 1.2, make all necessary
      changes from 1.2 to 1.3, from 1.3 to 1.4, and from 1.4 to 1.5). 

2.  Set up the /etc/koha.conf configuration file with local settings.

3.  Modify apache configuration files.
      This gets tricky.  In debian, these files are in either /etc/apache/
      or /etc/apache-ssl

      I have the following in my httpd.conf


----------------------------
<VirtualHost 192.168.1.240>
ServerName opac.cmsd.bc.ca
DocumentRoot /usr/share/koha/opac/htdocs/
ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /usr/share/koha/opac/cgi-bin/
Options +Includes
AddHandler server-parsed .html
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost 192.168.1.241>
ServerName librarian.cmsd.bc.ca
DocumentRoot /usr/share/koha/intranet/htdocs/
ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /usr/share/koha/intranet/cgi-bin/
Options +Includes
XBitHack On
AddHandler server-parsed .html
</VirtualHost>
----------------------------


Some tricky parts:


1.  Obviously, the ip and servername need to be altered on a per-site
    basis.
2.  The server has to have the aliased ips set up and ready to go.  This
    requires modifying init files that I'm not comfortable doing even on
    Debian systems, much less any distribution generically.  This will
    probably still have to be done manually.
3.  The intranet virtual server needs authentication of one sort or
    another.  I maintain accounts with a separate system that I developed
    called K12Admin which administers staff and student accounts for my
    entire district.  These accounts are synced into the Koha member
    database and apache basic authentication files.  I use basic
    authentication to authenticate the intranet virtual host and plan to
    do the same for giving members access to their library information.
    What are other people using?