FOOD FOR THOUGHT Time for packages?

[msatt]

Firstly - Thank you for your efforts in providing PIAF and the continuous moving target.
Currently your install scripts appear to be building everything from scratch. So changes in OS often mess up the scripts plus changes in asterisk add further levels of complexity.
Other providers have gone down the route of distribution packages, is there a reason why PIAF cannot evolve to packages?

 

[tbrummell]

Ward's answer:

https://pbxinaflash.com/community/threads/incredible-pbx-for-ubuntu-issues.23611/post-141386

 

[wardmundy]

Many actually like the flexibility to modify or update from source code on the fly. Source-based installs also provide a way for users to learn how sausage is made which is what open source development is all about. There are lots of package alternatives out there if that's your preference. But there is only one option for source-based installs, and (in case you couldn't tell) we believe "evolving" to packaged installs would be a step in the wrong direction.

 

[msatt]

Fully understand about learning how 'sausage is made' however......
Expecting a user to understand initially 1540+ lines of code so they can tweak something is going to be challenging unless you are an experienced developer - which I fully appreciate many of you are.

The amount of work (and support) you all do for the community is fantastic and going to a package solution I believe would reduce your support work considerably. By all means make the installer that built everything available for download as you currently do. But add to it a switch to create a package and make the package available for download also. Users can then choose the tweak or the packaged options.

I have an old stable version working but want to migrate it to another cloud provider - I can get the same OS but trying to build everything from the original script breaks. Packages could solve this problem and the backup / restore should then work.... maybe

As far as "lots of package alternatives " - pbxinaflash has always been and will always be my only open source solution. But so is a package like Apache, mysql etc. I rarely install them from source but know that I could when I need to tweak so why can this not be done with PIAF ?

Thanks for your time.
Mike

 

[wardmundy]

We already provide pre-packaged solutions for the VirtualBox, VMware, and Raspberry Pi platforms while retaining source code flexibility. There simply is no similar design available with yum and apt, at least that we are aware of.

Feel free to submit any solution you have developed, and we'll be glad to take a look at it. Thanks.