customizing the default manifests

[Andrew Roth]

Hello,

I want to add a module to the default apache2 manifest.  I was about to add a "a2enmod('expires')" (I want mod_expires) to lib/moonshine/manifest/rails/apache.rb in my moonshine fork, but I wonder if this is the right/best way to do that.  Would it be better to copy the manifest locally and customize it there, as a best practice?

-Andrew Roth

[Jesse Newland]

There are about a million ways to do this, thanks to a Moonshine manifest being just a Ruby class with a bunch of methods. One way would be to create a module in lib/ that has one method that makes the appropriate calls:

  module MoonshineApacheModules

     def apache_modules

      a2enmod 'expires'

    end

  end

Then, in your manifest:

  require 'path/to/moonshine_apache_modules.rb'

  

 class ApplicationManifest < Moonshine::Manifest::Rails

  

    ...

    include MoonshineApacheModules

    recipe :apache_modules

  end

If you're totally crazy, you could even do some alias_method_chain magic add extra features to the 'apache_server' recipe in apache.rb, since recipes are just methods. :)

However, if you find yourself commonly starting a project with some additions to a moonshine manifest, the best practice is probably creating a moonshine plugin with those customizations:

http://blog.railsmachine.com/articles/2009/05/06/moonshine-plugins-yo-dawg-i-put-a-plugin-in-your-plugin/

Here are a couple sample plugins:

http://github.com/railsmachine/moonshine_scout

http://github.com/railsmachine/moonshine_xsendfile/

http://github.com/leejones/moonshine_php/

http://github.com/leejones/moonshine_phpmyadmin/

http://github.com/leejones/moonshine_webmin/

Now that I think about things, the 'expires' module is pretty commonly used in the deployment of Rails apps, and I wouldn't mind adding that to the default stack. Pull request? ;)

Let me know if you have questions about any of this!

Regards -

Jesse Newland
---
je...@railsmachine.com
404.216.1093

[Andrew Roth]

Good ideas.  If you're happy with putting expires in to the core repository, that's my favored solution. :)  I'll send a pull request later.

-Andrew

[Andrew Roth]

Got another one: ssl module.  Would you be ok with putting that in core as well, or should I use one of the customization techniques so it's just on mine?

-Andrew

On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 4:07 PM, Jesse Newland <je...@railsmachine.com> wrote:

[Andrew Roth]

Oh, I see there's already support for ssl: http://wiki.github.com/railsmachine/moonshine/adding-an-ssl-certificate

-Andrew