hi openpkg-users,
after evaluation openpkg for some time my initial enthusiasm starts turning into light frustration, because each step i go further, new problems occur that throw me back two steps.
with this email, i would like to explain to you, how i planed to use openpkg, and would be glad, if you could give me your opinion, if openpkg can really help me in making my job easier. it's a quite long email, but it takes some lines, so describe my expectations and problems.
we are developing web applications, mostly based on software like java (j2ee), apache, db-servers, ldap-servers in various combinations and configurations.
the task: since there are a lot of projects to handle we need shared development- and test-servers for our projects. i want to use openpkg to completely separate the projects on the machine. each project gets it's own openpkg instance. a "central" instance is used for some uncritical "proxied" general purpose-packages.
there are two primary reasons for me to use openpkg this way: -easy handling of different versions of a package on one machine -easy switching on/off all components of an instance
the latter is important, because we have only a limited number of "active projects", that should get the machines resources, but a lot of sleeping-support-project, that should not get any resources, unless a client calls with a problem. then we need to be able to "switch on" the whole project very quickly and without interfering other running projects.
a minor reason for using openpkg is, that although our development-servers are completely linux-based, the production-servers are sometimes sun-solaris machines.
openpkg promises seemed to fit perfect for this job -- at first.
in practice, i have the problem, that we have a lot of legacy-projects, sometimes with very old software-versions. and even in new projects, we often can't decide, which version of a specific package we have to use. so we must be able to build specific releases of the various packages, not only the one, distributed with the openpkg instance. maybe it would be possible to get source-rpm for older versions from the cvs, but is there a guarantee, that a source-rpm of openpkg 1.2 will run in an openpkg 2.2 instance? my first experience in building older apache versions from apaches src.tar.gz ends in coredumps. for me, it's difficult enough to build everything from source (not with openpkg- that runs smooth, but with regular source distributions). but if i have to expect additional problems because i'm using openpkg, this makes my world darker, not lighter.
second: java-web application-environments doesn't seem to be a major focus of the openpkg-community. trying to build a really basic and common configuration with apache2, tomcat4 and mod_jk-connector with the current release didn't succeed. i wouldn't expect this, if more people out there were using openpkg for this kind of stuff. so, if this is my primary focus, i would have to dig deep into openpkg before being able to use it.
third: this is just a minor issue, but it seems, that the concept of proxy-packages isn't used very much too. otherwise, maybe, since disk space is cheap, that's no critical problem, but for easy administration of often used packages, it would help prevent some boring work.
i'm not shure, whether i did just miss the right way to use openpkg. but i didn't find one.
so, what is your opinion? is it worth for me, to dig deeper into openpkg, because there's a light at the end of the tunnel. or do i expect things, that openpkg can't deliver (now)?
don't get me wrong. openpkg has an impressing concept, and i'm sure, there are many environments, where it really solves problems. but i'm not sure, if does it for me.
of course i know, that openpkg is open source and lives from get-and-give. and i would be glad to support the project on my way getting more experienced. but if i would have to get an openpkg-pro first, before being able to solve my basic tasks (like installing apache2-tomcat4-mod_jk), i prefer fiddling with my old problems instead of getting additional new ones.
or maybe, the expected "average openpkg user" is higher qualified than me -- i'm no experienced rpm-administrator, building easily .spec-files and produce patches. till now it was sufficient for my job to get the necessary packages and find the right ./configure options.
i'm looking forward reading your replies. thanks in advance,
andi______________________________________________________________________ The OpenPKG Project www.openpkg.org User Communication List [EMAIL PROTECTED]
