[rt-users] Site-specific customization of RT

[Smylers]

darren chamberlain wrote:

> I hope I can be helpful here;

Ta.

> Quoting Smylers <smylers at gbdirect.co.uk> [Mar 26, 2002 10:12]:
>
> >
> > That was my understanding of the purpose of rt/local/, but
> > appears not to be the case.  It works for html/, but not lib/.
>
> That's because the local thing is for HTML::Mason's component root
> only, and has nothing to do with perl.

perldoc HTML::Mason::Interp suggests that HTML::Mason can take multiple
alternative component roots.  The fact that it's called "local" is an
'RT' thing rather than being hardcoded into Mason.

> >   use lib "/usr/local/rt/lib";
> >   use lib "/usr/local/rt/local/lib";
> >   use lib "/usr/local/rt/etc";
>
> This will work, although for completely different reasons than
> the reasons that local works for html files and Mason components.

Yeah.

> >   * What should be in rt/local/ then?  If rt/local/lib/ isn't the done
> >     thing then the only content of that directory is rt/local/WebRT/,
> >     and the only content of _that_ directory is rt/local/WebRT/html/,
> >     and I don't see the point of having two extra levels of hierarchy
> >     that don't contain anything.
>
> Note that the way HTML::Mason works is that components will be
> looked for in local, not HTML files called by Apache.

Yup.  But since Mason doesn't do this by itself, it means somebody
specifically designed 'RT' with the rt/local/ in mind.  I'm trying to
work out _what_ they had in mind.

config.pm has these two settings:

  $MasonComponentRoot = "/usr/local/rt/WebRT/html";
  $MasonLocalComponentRoot = "/usr/local/rt/local/WebRT/html";

Why did somebody decide to make that second one what it is, and not,
say:

  $MasonLocalComponentRoot = "/usr/local/rt/local";

The logical conclusion is that there's something else which can go under
rt/local/ other than rt/local/local/WebRT/html/.  That's why I then
tried putting libraries there, since it made sense.

> Here's an abbreviated look at how HTML pages are served through
> HTML::Mason: The browser requests a URI, Apache turns it into a
> path on the system, and then Apache passes control to
> HTML::Mason ... <Snip>

That's what I was assuming.  Although there's something going on which
makes Mason only do this for some types of files -- do you know how to
make it try to grab images locally as well:

  http://lists.fsck.com/pipermail/rt-users/2002-March/007373.html

> So why does the second "use lib" line above work?  Because it's
> telling perl, not HTML::Mason, where to look for perl modules.
> If you have a Mason component that loads My::RT::Module, perl's
> lib path is searched, not Mason's component root.

I follow _why_ it works.  It seemed to me to be nicely symmetrical to
make the two different paths work like that, which is how I initially
mis-interpreted 'RT' as being.  When I saw that it wasn't, it was
trivial to make it so.

My mis-understanding is conceptual rather than technical -- why is
rt/local/ like it is, and how does 'RT' envisage that it should be used?

Thanks very much for your time on this.

Smylers
-- 
GBdirect
http://www.gbdirect.co.uk/