[pmwiki-users] working directory

[Patrick R. Michaud]

On Wed, Feb 22, 2006 at 11:59:11AM -0700, H. Fox wrote:
> On 2/21/06, Patrick R. Michaud <pmichaud at pobox.com> wrote:
> > On another note, Hagan Fox once remarked that it would be nice to
> > put all of these writable directories (wiki.d/, uploads/, work.d/)
> > into a single directory -- something like:
> > [...]
> 
> As you might expect, I enthusiastically vote "yes" on this.

Unfortunately, I think I've talked myself out of it for now.

Firstly, after thinking about it I don't think we get to put
uploads/ into the data/ directory quite so easily.  It really
makes things much more difficult for CleanUrls and other recipes.
And -- contrary to what I wrote earlier, it doesn't solve the
problem of uploads/ subdirs when safe_mode is turned on -- the
admin still has to manually create upload directories for each
group.  :-(

So, that just leaves wiki.d/ and "work.d/" (whatever we decide
to call it).  While I can see good arguments for splitting these
out by default, it does make for an extra step at installation
time, which isn't exactly what I'm wanting to do there.  So, my
current thinking is that we leave $WorkDir set to 'wiki.d'
by default, but put a note in sample-config.php advising that
this be changed to 'work.d' or 'temp.d' (and creating the
needed directory as appropriate).

> > One advantage of this is that the data/ directory can be exist as
> > part of the distribution, and we simply tell people to change its
> > permissions to 777 or 2777 as appropriate when it's needed.
> > (No more setting/unsetting permissions on the pmwiki root.)

It turns out to not be this simple, unless we radically restructure
the installation instructions.  What we have now works pretty well, 
and after thinking about it more I don't see enough benefit to the 
new structure (and the associated increase in complexity) to warrant 
making a lot of changes here.

> Another advantage is that it makes it more obvious what's in the
> directory.  It makes backing up data easier because you only need to
> copy or archive one directory with an obvious name.  

Personally, I think that admins should be backing up the 
cookbook/ and local/ directories as well.

Pm