[rt-users] Installation Usability

[Miles Scruggs]

After fighting with the install for more hours than I would like to admit, I
think there could be some changes made, to improve the ease of it, just a
little.  Right now RT seems to be written by perl programmers (ya I came up
with that all on my own) for perl programmers.  The config files aren't just
standard flat files that values get read out of.  There is a mix of  ' vs "
. That I still can't make heads or tails out of.  What is the difference
between these three? 

Set($Organization , "example.com");

&

Set($CorrespondAddress , 'RT::CorrespondAddress.not.set');

& 

Set($WebBaseURL , "http://RT::WebBaseURL.not.configured:80");

The difference isn't what is important, it is the fact to a non perl
programmer like myself this makes little if no sense.  I do have a little
programming background so things like the   ;  at the end of lines do make
sense, but should they have to?  

Why not make the setup and install easy for people that have no programming
experience (I know scary thought to have admins like these running loose,
but they do exist).  

Also it took me sometime debugging before I realized that the config file
was loaded at apache runtime, and not called from the rt scripts.  It never
hinted in the manual that you needed to restart Apache when you changed a
config directive.  I don't know enough about performance with perl, but is
much lost on having a flat file parsed similar to httpd.conf or php.ini
(where there isn't a huge mess of syntax to worry about) , and have the
values be read at RT login or as they are needed?  

Anyway complements to the programmers that have done a great job so far.  By
far the best trouble ticket framework out there, and yes I know it is under
dev, but now I'm close to bald.


Miles
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