Comment 5 for bug 463381

I get it. But for a moment I'd like to ask you to consider usabilty of this
package from the point of view of a typical installer. (Comments welcome ;-)

There are a number of problems with trying to get moodle to work out of the
box:

1. The information given in the README.Debian (which is where such a notice
should be) would lead one down the false belief that mysql/moodle is
supported in Debian/Ubuntu (what's that about my.cnf at the end? Adding a
note about 'sudo aptitude install moodle mysql-server php5-mysql' would be
helpful for the lost and weary).

2. The depends: line in the 'apt-cache show moodle' output gives the
impression that there is some kind of choice built in. According to the
syntax of the control file however, the primary choice will always satisfy
the installer, regardless of administrator preferences set elsewhere.
'php5-pgsql' (and postgresql-client, postgresql) should then be dependencies
each on the one package alone. It should be clear rather than ambiguous
what exactly you are getting when you install 'moodle' from Debian/Ubuntu.

3. The install screens give the false impression that there is an either/or
decision being made by the administrator. That is, the administrator
believes that he/she is choosing to set up Moodle with either
postgresql-server or mysql-server. This choice has no effect on the
packages which were already chosen by aptitude. If indeed these scripts are
not supported by Debian/Ubuntu then perhaps they should not be shown at all.

On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 2:27 AM, Jeremy Bicha <email address hidden> wrote:

> Moodle in both Debian and Ubuntu uses postgresql by default. If someone
> wants mysql, they will have to do more work. Basically, they will need
> to do something like:
>
> sudo aptitude install moodle mysql-server php5-mysql
>
> If they do this, neither postgresql or php5-pgsql will be installed and
> moodle will work just fine with mysql. Although php5-mysql is a small
> file, I'm not sure that we should install it for everyone. Basically,
> moodle works with either postgresql or mysql but if you want mysql you
> have to know what you're doing.
>
> Maybe we should add a note that if you want mysql, you'll have to
> install php5-mysql.
>
> I believe this bug will also occur if someone already has mysql-server
> installed without php5-mysql.
>
> ** Changed in: moodle (Ubuntu)
> Status: Incomplete => New
>
> ** Summary changed:
>
> - moodle package is lacking critical dependancy on php-db
> + moodle does not work out of the box with mysql
>
> --
> moodle does not work out of the box with mysql
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/463381
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> of the bug.
>