[Pmwiki-users] pmwiki-0.6.21 released with experimental WikiFarm support

[Patrick R. Michaud]

On Fri, May 28, 2004 at 06:19:05AM -0700, Andrew Shapira wrote:
> [...]  I wonder if,
> after the new AgroWiki is stable, the users would be done a big big
> service if you could figure out how to merge the previously existing
> WikiFarms and the to-be-named AgroWiki variety into one thing that is
> released with the main PmWiki software.  

In general I agree, but part of the problem is that the two WikiFarm 
implementations take *substantially* different approaches to building 
and managing the farm, and I don't quite know how to merge them, or 
even if they should be merged.

If I understand it correctly, the WikiFarm implementation in the Cookbook 
uses entries in a wiki page to create new fields in the farm, and all 
local customizations for the field are held in the farm's 
pmwiki/local/wikifarm/ directory.  This makes it easy to create fields
in the farm, but in practical terms, this means that only the farm 
administrator (or whoever has access to the farm account)
can create/modify local customizations in the fields.
(John and others: feel free to correct any misinterpretations I've made.)

Version 0.6.21 takes the approach that a single pmwiki installation can
be used to serve multiple fields in different (user) accounts on the same
system.  This would be useful for web hosting environments, where the 
hosting provider wants to allow field administrators in separate web
hosting accounts the ability to enter their own local customizations.
Of course, multiple fields can be installed in a single account as well.

I don't think that one approach is necessarily superior to the other; they 
just appear to meet different needs and applications.  So, perhaps it's 
better to have two approaches, and come up with suitably different names 
and descriptions of each so that people can understand the difference.

It also could be that the wikifarm code in 0.6.21 simplifies the 
implementation of the Cookbook wikifarm script, so that creating new 
fields via a wiki page and the other things that the Cookbook version
does could be seen as "extensions" to the wikifarm capabilities built in 
to 0.6.21.  (Perhaps a "WikiCoOp"?)   I'll be quite happy to help
in any merging of the two approaches, but because this would likely
require extra time and effort from John and/or Donald, I think the
choice to start down that path is properly left to them.  Until then,
I just try to make sure that changes to the core PmWiki base
don't unduly interfere with existing installations and Cookbook recipes.

Pm