Postby jch » Wed Sep 07, 2005 3:55 am
This question came up way back when in another place. We had a different installation and configuration program then -- some of the subscribers to this forum will probably still remember it.
Part of the job that the installation program has to do is to verify that the environment that you're trying to install Scalix in is "up to snuff". We need various libraries and whatnot installed (some of which rpm takes care of) and we need some configuration files to be in an expected place (for example, sendmail.cf). While it is possible for support and development to look at a machine and work out whether everything is present and in the right place it is *much* harder for any program. Actually, it becomes a constant battle between the code and scripts and the installation program: changes we make to the server have to be reflected in the installation program. Of course, we do make changes to the installation program as part of development (and that's going on right now as I speak); but in the interests of sanity we want to keep the coupling between the installation program and the rest of the code as loose as possible. Tight coupling just results in something which is unreliable and unmaintainable.
That's the philosophy we adopted then and while we have a very different installation program now, we have a similar philosophy now.
In your particular case, I would recommend adding the patches and whatnot that you need to the Red Hat (or SuSE) RPM and installing that. You'll still be on your own if you have problems relating to the web server, but at least the installer will be happy. And, quite apart from anything else, there are lots of other things that use apache and having the files in the right place and whatnot will make them happier as well.