I untarred TWiki-4.0.5.tgz and horror of horrors, it had no single root in its directory. Its the first tarball to do this to me in years, and I think its bad form. Better to give instructions on copying the distribution to the right place, than to risk dumping the distro into a directory not meant for it.

-- AndrewKirkpatrick - 02 Jan 2007

Andrew reported this in TWiki:Codev/KnownIssuesOfTWiki04x00x00. I raised this issue for tracking.

There is an unwritten standard that release packages unpack into a root directory, and it makes a lot of sense to anyone used to dealing with multiple installed packages.

The lack of a root directory makes sense if you support the idea of unscripted installs, as each successive package is unzipped over the top of the existing install. This approach works adequately for most experienced admins, but is easy to discredit as it can create support nightmares, especially for beginners. With the existing installer tech (TWiki:Plugins.BuildContrib), there is no excuse for it any more.

CC

can i make this a release blocker? if not, put it back

WN

With the huge bug backlog we have - I'd rather focus on getting those killed. Even the "normal" ones.

Fixing this also involves a lot of doc fixing, and it probably also has a lot of other impact. The BuildContrib needs to be recoded also.

And then there is the communication part with existing customers.

I would prefer such a big change done on a Major release. So having it as a release blocker for 5.0 is fine. But I really think we should focus on getting the real bugs fixed now for 4.2. Especially because we have so many to fix.

KJL

This is an enhancement IMHO. Nothing is broken, it's just not as standard as it could be.

CC

Raising this to urgent to get some visibility.

-- PeterThoeny - 04 May 2010

Strong Suggestion: We need to start building bz2 format packaging too.

I tried searching best practices for packaging Open Source Software. Many of them use the standard packaging tools like rpm, etc.. I did not find any good suggestion for packaging tools with Tar/Gzip and Zip tools.

I observed the packaging of tools like Drupal, Wordpress, Joomla, Moin-Moin, Trac, Docuwiki.. they dont follow any fix practice.. but most of them have package file names as toolname-version-number.tgz or toolname-version-number.tar.gz. When unpacked (tar xvfz ... or gunzip -c ...|tar xvf - ), creates directory "toolname". A few of them create directories with "toolname-version-number". For TWiki, creating directory with caps "TWiki" is kind of odd for Unix standards.

So for TWiki release 5.0.0 I suggest following:

• package file name: TWiki-5.0.0.tar.gz
• unpackage of this file should give something similar to following

$cd download
$ls
TWiki-5.0.0.tar.gz
$ tar xvfz TWiki-5.0.0.tar.gz 
twiki/
twiki/twiki_httpd_conf.txt
twiki/pub-htaccess.txt
twiki/locale/
twiki/locale/sv.po
twiki/locale/nl.po
twiki/locale/es.po
twiki/locale/zh-cn.po
twiki/locale/pl.po
twiki/locale/fi.po
twiki/locale/cs.po
...
...
...
$ls
twiki  TWiki-5.0.0.tar.gz
$ cd twiki/
$ ls
AUTHORS       locale         tools
COPYING       pub         TWikiHistory.html
COPYRIGHT     pub-htaccess.txt      twiki_httpd_conf.txt
data         readme.txt      TWikiReleaseNotes05x00.html
index.html    robots.txt      TWikiUpgradeGuide.html
INSTALL.html  root-htaccess.txt    working
lib         subdir-htaccess.txt
LICENSE       templates

Similar practice should be followed in future releases.

-- TWiki:Main.SopanShewale - 13 May 2010

Agree with all, except package name. Better keep current .tgz instead of changing to .tar.gz.

-- TWiki:Main.PeterThoeny - 13 May 2010

Yes, agree with you Peter. Let us stick to .tgz extension.

-- TWiki:Main.SopanShewale - 14 May 2010