Technical insights and software architecture

Deep dives into PHP development, Horde Framework evolution and practical software engineering. Focused on real-world solutions for complex technical challenges. “Always close to the source”.

Core Topics

PHP, Horde Framework, authentication systems, composer workflows and modern development practices.

Long-form Analysis

Comprehensive technical articles exploring architectural decisions, migration strategies and lessons learned from real projects.

Code & Community

Open source contributions, framework development and sharing knowledge with the PHP developer community.

Author: Ralf

  • Installing Horde 4 pear packages to a custom pear location (SUSE)

    When installing horde to a custom pear location, you need to run the pear of your custom location, not the system pear with the custom location’s config. So the steps would be: 1  mkdir /srv/horde 2  pear config-create /srv/horde/ /srv/horde/pear.conf 3  pear -c /srv/horde/pear.conf install PEAR as the install docs say but then: 4 /srv/horde/pear/pear…

  • Horde 5 is coming / Horde 3 support ends

    Horde 5 planned for April 2012 / Horde 3 Support ends / OpenSUSE 12.2 will get Horde 5 if schedule permits / Horde 3 dropped from factory / Eleusis dropped

  • Horde Config: How to fill dropdowns with application data with configspecial

    Horde provides system wide customisation and configuration of applications through php configuration files. These files can be edited by hand or written from an administrator config UI. This ui is automatically generated from a file called conf.xml located in your $application/config/ directory. The config xml allows dropdowns, multiselect fields, tick boxes, radio buttons and even…

  • The Author

    The author is a developer and trainer in perl and PHP with several years of professional experience in both areas. While leaning strongly towards solutions involving the horde framework he also solved problems with perl catalyst, moose, CakePHP, wordpress, facebook api, PHP Symfony and Zend Framework. Get my GPG key for secure communication. —–BEGIN PGP…

  • Distributed applications with Horde 4

    Synopsis Horde’s powerful RPC API has been used numerous times to allow integration of horde-based data into external applications or remote sites. It also provides an easy to set up basis for distributed applications with headless workers. In this article I will give you a brief introduction on how to build a scalable distributed architecture…

  • Using socat or netcat to debug unix sockets like telnet for tcp

    Sometimes you want to debug a service with a clear text protocol, but it uses unix sockets instead of INET sockets. Surprisingly, there is little info on this around the net. An easy solution would be socat: socat UNIX-CONNECT:/var/run/blabla/nameofthe.sock STDIN EDIT: Linux consultant Stefan Seyfried pointed out, that from openSUSE 12.1 onwards you can also…

  • Luedecke petitions Hewlett-Packard: Release the HP WebOS code now!

    OpenSUSE Ambassador Roger Luedecke has just started a petition towards the Hewlett-Packackard Company (HP) to release the WebOS source code under the GPL license. Luedecke says, “I care deeply about this very important issue”. WebOS is a mobile operating system based on Linux and was originally developed by handheld computer producer Palm, who are now…

  • OpenSUSE 12.1 drops Sun/Oracle Java

    Today, openSUSE Program Manager Andreas Jaeger announced that openSUSE will stop shipping Sun Java in the upcoming 12.1 release. Distribution users will now only be offered the GPLed openJDK. In a recent announcement, Oracle declared openJDK to be the new official reference implementation for Java SE7. Along with that move, Oracle dropped the “Distributor’s License…

  • Horde Project pushes libraries to the frontpage

    As you might know, the horde project does not only release a set of production quality software (and an interesting bunch more which are not yet release quality) but also provides over 80 well-designed loosely coupled libraries which help you build websites, business applications or even commandline tools. To stress that point, the Horde Project…

  • Tip of the day: Changing global php pear settings as root

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    Don’t forget: when you change pear settings as root, usually you want to set values in the system pear config, not in root’s personal config. The crucial third parameter is optional and defaults to ‘user’. We want ‘system’ instead pear config-set test_dir /usr/share/php/tests systems verify: pear config-show