Item1412: Documentation needs to mention ModPerlEngineContrib

Documentation needs to mention engine for FSA

The release notes and the release history mention FSA and FastCGIEngineContrib, but it's nowhere explained in the installation documentation that you need to install an extension in order to make Foswiki work with fastcgi or mod_perl.

chrisv opened a support question for that

We support mod_perl in the ApacheConfigGenerator (or we used to), but we never mention how to use it properly.

-- OlivierRaginel - 02 Apr 2009

Should the basic installation process first get a CGI-based installation working, and then in the "Beyond the basic installation" section, describe getting Foswiki working using other execution environments? I think it would be easier to debug in case of errors, particularly for a less experienced admin.

-- IsaacLin - 02 Apr 2009

I think that's what the original authors of the installation doc were trying to deliver. CGI is a good choice, because it gives you something that "mostly" works fairly quickly. The risk is that it funnels people down one of many different configuration paths.

You could see it as like a tree; a CGI install is the trunk and the taproot, all the different install configurations are the other roots, and all the branches are the different post-install configuration options. I like to think of the other roots as represented by the "FoswikiOnIPhone" type topics, that lead you to the trunk from a specific system configuration.

When I'm testing new code I almost always start by stripping back to what I call a "minimal install" - I take all the contribs and plugins I can out of the system, and reset LocalSite.cfg to the "start state", to reduce the number of variables I have to deal with. Installation is a similar problem.

-- CrawfordCurrie - 02 Apr 2009

Yes, I agree. The current documentation is very good, but I would just like some pointers that it's made for CGI, and if people are using some caching technique such as mod_perl, fastcgi, speedy, etc..., they should have a look at the FSA article, or however you want to call it, which should be an entry point with docs explaining how to install and configure Foswiki on mod_perl, on FastCGI, etc... I even think we have these kind of documents. It's just that it's the second time in 2 weeks that a user asks for help because he never heard of the ModPerlEngineContrib or of the FastCGIEngineContrib, so I thought maybe we should do something about it.

I honestly didn't even check the documentation But I checked the entry for the support web, and for me it was clear what was supposed to be a task, and what was supposed to be a support question. But for the user I asked to report this bug, a support question seemed more logical. So...

-- OlivierRaginel - 02 Apr 2009

The problem here is historical: at the time Foswiki 1.0.0 was released, ModPerlEngineContrib was not released yet. When I released it, I updated the Download topic, but I didn't sync with ReleaseNotes01x00 in svn, so the shipped documentation doesn't mention mod_perl support..

Besides data/System/ReleaseNotes01x00.txt, any other document to update?

-- GilmarSantosJr - 04 Apr 2009