[Web-SIG] more comments on Paste Deploy

[Joseph Tate]

On Wednesday 07 March 2007 05:34:15 Jim Fulton wrote:
> I'd love to get some input who know a lot about what makes deploying
> PHP apps so easy.

It's not the packaging format.  Most php apps come down as a tarball.  Extract 
it to your apache root, and you can connect to the app and do configuration, 
without even restarting apache (thanks to mod_php).   I think the key thing 
is that configuring a "well written" php app is done through the web 
interface.  No mucking with config files, no apache configuration required, 
etc.  Just have to create a database and a user with permissions to it.  If 
you'd like a specific example, I suggest trying to install gallery 
(http://gallery.menalto.com).

There are sacrifices to make for this approach though: the app has to be able 
to write at least to its own config file, and to .htaccess.  This means that 
security has to be super tight.  Frequently the instructions are to chmod 777 
the app's top level directory, configure, and then unchmod.  Because so many 
things can be modified via .htaccess, including directory specific php 
settings, you rarely need further configuration.

-- 
Joseph Tate
Software Engineer
rPath Inc.
http://www.rpath.com/rbuilder/
(919) 851-3984 x2106