[HCoop-Discuss] Domtool & .htaccess files

[Clinton Ebadi]

Philip Neustrom <philipn at gmail.com> writes:

> Even something ghetto would be okay for most every use case.  I think
> we could set some sane options in AllowOverride -- even just allowing
> people set set directories and serve static / PHP would allow people
> to do things like install wordpress really easily.

I don't see any /technical/ reason to allow .htaccess--domtool was
written to solve the problem of exposing a sane set of options to
users. Why solve the same problem in a more adhoc way (again [0])?

Domtool gives you what .htaccess does in a way that prevents any user
from accidentally taking down Apache for everyone; in the misty pasts of
the coop we had issues with infinite mod_rewrite loops and such and
domtool is the second generation solution to these problems. It may seem
like .htaccess files are needed coming from a normal hosting provider,
but your domtool config achieves the same end. The only thing you lose
is the ability to copy and paste configs or reuse your existing
knowledge of Apache syntax; I think the benefits of domtool outweigh the
time needed to pick it up (e.g. it is nice being able to statically
check your config for correctness).

Domtool has the additional advantage that once one person knows how to
set something up, that config can be rewritten into a bit of domtool
library code--e.g. the wordPress directive for setting up Wordpress with
one line of domtool config is written in domtool itself.

The only issue I see with domtool now is the library reference manual
(otherwise I think the documentation is great)--there is no nontechnical
explanation of the notation used. If you know how to read a bit of ML or
can grok [1] then, sure, the library reference is perfectly
comprehensible. I think something like [2] applied to the syntax of the
reference library would be helpful... (as long as people are still OK
with spending ten or fifteen minutes reading a quick tutorial for things
they don't quite understand yet).

Disclaimer: I am a weird Lisp programmer and so found domtool trivial to
learn; I'm guessing this might not be so true for non-programmers.

[0] http://hcoop.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/hcoop/domtool/
[1] http://wiki.hcoop.net/DomTool/LanguageReference
[2] http://wiki.hcoop.net/DomTool/UserGuide

-- 
Jessie: but today i was a nerd
Jessie: i even read slashdot.