Webapp-config

General

• webapp-config is a Gentoo only tool to allow a single web applications to be correctly installed into multiple virtual hosts. This is nice as it allows the code to remain on a standard, Portage managed place while you can easily deploy your web applications into production.

• Currently the way it works is by creating a directory corresponding to the application inside the specified virtual host. By default it will be installed in /var/www/<virtual_host_name>/htdocs; you can configure that by editing /etc/vhosts/webapp-config. I use the following convention:

vhost_root="/srv/${vhost_subdomain_2}.${vhost_subdomain_1}/"
vhost_htdocs_insecure="./"

• In /etc/vhosts/webapp-config, you need to have a vhost_hostname variable that can conform to a fully qualified domain, eg localhost won't work. Put something like "elvanor.net" there.

• The only problem is that webapp-config always creates icons, error, and cgi-bin directories in the virtual host directory if they are not there. I would prefer that not to happen.

Installing, checking

• Typical installation:

webapp-config -h shoopz.com -d wordpress -I wordpress 2.7.1

• To check what are the current installations of a given application (you can optionally specify a version):

webapp-config --list-installs wordpress 2.8

• To check unused installs (very useful):

webapp-config --lui wordpress

Updating

• When you need to update a web application, use the -U switch, eg:

webapp-config -h elvanor.net -d phpmyadmin -U phpmyadmin 2.11.5

• If you use a directory different that the application name, don't forget to change that. However note that by convention that should not happen.

webapp-config -h www.elvanor.net -d www/mediawiki -U mediawiki 1.13.3

Important warnings

• Updating a web-application can sometimes remove the configuration files! Be sure to systematically check (this is the case with Wordpress, although it seems to be a bug). Also, any changes to the DB must usually be done manually.
• emerge --depclean will remove *installed* versions of a webapp package if a newer one has been already merged! Thus update all your web-applications before running emerge --depclean.
• Running webapp-cleaner should also be done before emerge --depclean.
• On the version of the web application, you must not omit any Gentoo specific -rX (for instance, 1.27.1-r1).

Cleaning

• The application webapp-cleaner can be used to remove old versions of an webapp package.
• Manual removal of a web-app (there may be some leftover files):

webapp-config -C -h shoopz.net -d bugzilla bugzilla 3.0.5