[Moin-devel] A new feature for Wiki farms.

[Thomas Waldmann]

Hi,

>a message to the list, with a few questions. Note: I am not on the list (as I
>don't intend to be a regular MoinMoin developer), so please reply to me
>personally, rather than on-list.
>  
>
Maybe you should subscribe to the list, even as non-regular developer.

>1. Listing all pages finds the union of all names in the two sets (union of
>keys in the dictionaries).
>
>2. Reading a page's raw text off disk is a data access operation: it finds the
>page in the wiki's data_dir first. If it doesn't exist, it reads it off the
>farm's data_dir. The page is only "not found" if it doesn't exist in either
>namespace.
>
>3. There is no global statement, so all pages will be written to the locals
>namespace. Thus:
>
>  3a. Creating a new page that doesn't exist anywhere operates as normal - it
>creates it in that wiki's data dir.
>
>  3b. "Editing" a page that exists only in the farm actually creates a new
>(occluding) page in the individual wiki's local data dir. The inital value
>for that variable is accessed by a read operation, so is whatever was in the
>farm's page. However, saving the new page is implemented as a page creation
>for that one wiki, and so doesn't affect the wiki farm as a whole.
>
>  3c. Editing a page that is part of the individual wiki is performed as normal.
>
>  
>
Until here, it is about what Fujio's underlay_dir patch does.

It was posted to the list not long ago, maybe you can find it in the 
archives.

>4. The farm's global set is the regular data_dir for another wiki. This wiki
>is the farm admin wiki. Changes implemented through this wiki operate as
>normal for this wiki - writing to its local data_dir. This allows the admin to
>change what is in the global pages, for all wikis.
>
>  
>
Nice idea.

>5. The farm admin may choose, if he desires, to make certain pages (eg, system
>pages) be non-writable / non-creatable by anyone other than himself. This will
>prevent them from being overwritten by pages in any of the wikis in the farm
>(eg, protect the integrity of the Help pages). This is, of course, purely
>optional on the admin's part.
>  
>
This maybe should be integrated with ACL system in a sane, yet to be 
defined, way.

Maybe don't do that in first implementation.

>First, what do you think about this feature? Are you interested in having it
>added to the offical MoinMoin codebase?
>  
>
Sorry, that can't be decided now. As for Fujio's patch, we first have to 
integrate some other stuff (multilang).

After that, I think we can decide better whether to integrate such stuff 
(and how) or not.

>Second, many of you have better knowledge than I of the MoinMoin codebase.
>I've looked through it, and this change looks to be rather invasive - with a
>number of potentially bizarre side effects. Do any of you know of an elegant
>way to make the change?
>
Talk to Fujio, he is maybe interested in that NOW and he already did 
quite some of what you want.

greetings,

Thomas