Tag: composer

bookmark_borderHorde 6: Return of the Git Tree

Posted on by Ralf

Over the last few weekends, Horde 6 code has been merged back from the Maintaina fork and from separate contributions to the former Horde development version, “master”. It was time to upgrade the development tool chain.

Back in the Horde 5 days, there was a utility called git-tools developed by Michael Rubinsky. It would checkout all horde library and application repositories of the github organization into a development directory – also called the git tree – and link into into another structure that resembled a regular Horde 5 installation – called the web tree. This required to hardcode some configurations what could otherwise be auto-detected but it allowed to organize the horde code base in a developer friendly flat structure and provide a ready to run test scenario that reflected the latest code changes even before they were committed to the official repositories. In the days of composer, half of what git-tools does is already covered by composer itself. The git-tools shell already had an integration for the horde-components tool which manages releases, change log, housekeeping tasks and some more.

It was obvious that I wanted a similar functionality for the composer-based setups. It took a while to get this right. The good news is I achieved that. Bear with me for another paragraph of incremental learning or skip to the next section with the results.

It’s getting better all the time

Originally I integrated a generator for “vcs” type repositories into the composer.json generation code. But these vcs repositories are relatively slow. This is OK for one or two apps or leave packages but it’s really really slow when you have a list of 80 or 120 dependencies each pulled from a separate vcs repository.

The next iteration involved generating a satis repository as a standin to releasing code into packagist. The satis repository would be updated by any commit or accepted pull request in any of the serviced repositories. Generating the satis repository is not particularly fast but I managed to scope refreshs to the individual component that needed updating. Reading from satis however is way faster than the vcs approach. Keeping an installation up to date with the latest development commits became much more viable. I also figured I could replace an already installed dependency with an actual git repository and composer would update the autoloader as needed. This works as long as you don’t change the autoloader rules, i.e. upgrade a package from PSR-0 to PSR-4.

Back to #1

Checking out individual libraries as root components and doing integration tests in the satis setup worked OK when the focus was on isolating individual pain points and solving bugs. For any development spanning changes on multiple libraries, it did not work out too well. I ended up implementing a new command.

horde-components github-clone-org

This will checkout a developer tree of git repositories containing apps, libraries or themes.

total 752
drwxr-xr-x 188 root root 4096 Jan 12 11:04 ./
drwxr-xr-x   4 root root 4096 Dec  4 17:44 ../
drwxr-xr-x   9 root root 4096 Jan 11 07:50 ActiveSync/
drwxr-xr-x   9 root root 4096 Jan 11 07:50 Alarm/
drwxr-xr-x   8 root root 4096 Jan 11 07:50 ApertureToAnselExportPlugin/
drwxr-xr-x   9 root root 4096 Jan 11 07:50 Argv/
drwxr-xr-x   9 root root 4096 Jan 11 07:50 Auth/
drwxr-xr-x   7 root root 4096 Jan 11 07:50 Autoloader/
drwxr-xr-x   7 root root 4096 Jan 11 07:50 Autoloader_Cache/
drwxr-xr-x   7 root root 4096 Jan 11 07:50 Backup/
drwxr-xr-x   7 root root 4096 Jan 11 07:51 Browser/
drwxr-xr-x   9 root root 4096 Jan 11 07:51 Cache/
drwxr-xr-x   9 root root 4096 Jan 11 07:51 Cli/
drwxr-xr-x   8 root root 4096 Jan 11 07:51 Cli_Application/
drwxr-xr-x   8 root root 4096 Jan 11 07:51 Cli_Modular/
drwxr-xr-x   8 root root 4096 Jan 11 07:52 Compress/
drwxr-xr-x   8 root root 4096 Jan 11 07:52 Compress_Fast/
drwxr-xr-x   8 root root 4096 Jan 11 07:52 Constraint/
drwxr-xr-x   8 root root 4096 Jan 11 07:52 Controller/
drwxr-xr-x  11 root root 4096 Jan 11 07:52 Core/
drwxr-xr-x   8 root root 4096 Jan 11 07:52 Crypt/
drwxr-xr-x   7 root root 4096 Jan 11 07:52 Crypt_Blowfish/
drwxr-xr-x   6 root root 4096 Jan 11 07:52 CssMinify/
drwxr-xr-x   8 root root 4096 Jan 11 07:52 Css_Parser/
...
drwxr-xr-x   7 root root 4096 Jan 11 08:17 Xml_Element/
drwxr-xr-x   7 root root 4096 Jan 11 08:17 Xml_Wbxml/
drwxr-xr-x   7 root root 4096 Jan 11 08:17 Yaml/
drwxr-xr-x  14 root root 4096 Jan 11 07:50 agora/
drwxr-xr-x  17 root root 4096 Jan 11 07:50 ansel/
drwxr-xr-x  21 root root 4096 Jan 11 07:51 base/
drwxr-xr-x  13 root root 4096 Jan 11 07:51 beatnik/
drwxr-xr-x   7 root root 4096 Jan 12 21:33 bundle/
drwxr-xr-x  12 root root 4096 Jan 11 07:51 chora/
drwxr-xr-x  15 root root 4096 Jan 13 16:54 components/
drwxr-xr-x  11 root root 4096 Jan 11 07:52 content/
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root 4096 Jan 11 08:02 dev.horde.org/
drwxr-xr-x   3 root root 4096 Jan 11 08:02 dns/
drwxr-xr-x  15 root root 4096 Jan 11 08:03 folks/
drwxr-xr-x   6 root root 4096 Jan 11 08:03 git-tools/
drwxr-xr-x  12 root root 4096 Jan 11 08:03 gollem/
drwxr-xr-x   9 root root 4096 Jan 11 08:03 groupware/
drwxr-xr-x  13 root root 4096 Jan 11 08:03 hermes/
drwxr-xr-x   6 root root 4096 Jan 11 08:08 horde-installer-plugin/
drwxr-xr-x   7 root root 4096 Jan 11 08:08 horde-support/
drwxr-xr-x   9 root root 4096 Jan 11 08:10 horde-web/
drwxr-xr-x  10 root root 4096 Jan 11 08:10 hylax/
drwxr-xr-x   7 root root 4096 Jan 11 08:12 iPhoto2Ansel/
drwxr-xr-x  14 root root 4096 Jan 11 08:11 imp/
drwxr-xr-x  14 root root 4096 Jan 11 08:12 ingo/
drwxr-xr-x   3 root root 4096 Jan 11 08:12 internal/
drwxr-xr-x  15 root root 4096 Jan 11 08:12 jonah/
drwxr-xr-x  12 root root 4096 Jan 11 08:12 klutz/
drwxr-xr-x  13 root root 4096 Jan 11 08:12 kolab_webmail/
drwxr-xr-x   9 root root 4096 Jan 11 08:12 koward/
drwxr-xr-x  18 root root 4096 Jan 11 08:13 kronolith/
drwxr-xr-x  13 root root 4096 Jan 11 08:13 luxor/
drwxr-xr-x  17 root root 4096 Jan 11 08:13 mnemo/
drwxr-xr-x  18 root root 4096 Jan 11 08:14 nag/
drwxr-xr-x   9 root root 4096 Jan 11 08:14 operator/
drwxr-xr-x  13 root root 4096 Jan 11 08:14 passwd/
drwxr-xr-x  11 root root 4096 Jan 11 08:14 pastie/
drwxr-xr-x  10 root root 4096 Jan 11 08:15 sam/
drwxr-xr-x  13 root root 4096 Jan 11 08:15 sesha/
drwxr-xr-x  11 root root 4096 Jan 11 08:15 shout/
drwxr-xr-x  13 root root 4096 Jan 11 08:15 skeleton/
drwxr-xr-x   8 root root 4096 Jan 11 08:16 timeobjects/
drwxr-xr-x  14 root root 4096 Jan 12 09:08 trean/
drwxr-xr-x  16 root root 4096 Jan 11 08:16 turba/
drwxr-xr-x  11 root root 4096 Jan 11 08:16 ulaform/
drwxr-xr-x  15 root root 4096 Jan 12 11:06 vilma/
drwxr-xr-x  10 root root 4096 Jan 11 08:17 webmail/
drwxr-xr-x  18 root root 4096 Jan 11 08:17 whups/
drwxr-xr-x  15 root root 4096 Jan 11 08:17 wicked/

This tree does not look like a composer based installation and would not easily work in a web browser. I did not want to reinvent composer with its autoloader and other benefits so I wrapped it into an installer. This installer creates a new copy of the horde/bundle base project and registers all the other libraries as a special type of composer repository “path”.

 /srv/git/horde/components/bin/horde-components -c ~/horde-testme.conf.php install
[  INFO  ] Installation directory is missing: /srv/www/testme
[   OK   ] Created installation directory: /srv/www/testme
Creating a "horde/bundle" project at "../../www/testme"
Installing horde/bundle (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0)
  - Installing horde/bundle (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0): Mirroring from /srv/git/horde/bundle
Created project in /srv/www/testme

When running the composer install command on this prepared setup, composer will not download the horde components from packagist or github but will use your local checkout. Only external dependencies are still downloaded from the web.

# composer install
No composer.lock file present. Updating dependencies to latest instead of installing from lock file. See https://getcomposer.org/install for more information.
Loading composer repositories with package information
Updating dependencies
Lock file operations: 92 installs, 0 updates, 0 removals
  - Locking horde/alarm (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5)
  - Locking horde/argv (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5)
  - Locking horde/auth (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha7)
  - Locking horde/autoloader (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5)
  - Locking horde/browser (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5)
  - Locking horde/cache (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5)
  - Locking horde/cli (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha6)
  - Locking horde/cli_modular (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5)
  - Locking horde/compress (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5)
  - Locking horde/compress_fast (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 2.0.0alpha5)
  - Locking horde/constraint (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5)
  - Locking horde/controller (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5)
  - Locking horde/core (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha17)
  - Locking horde/crypt_blowfish (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 2.0.0alpha4)
  - Locking horde/css_parser (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 2.0.0alpha5)
  - Locking horde/cssminify (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 2.0.0alpha5)
  - Locking horde/data (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5)
  - Locking horde/date (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5)
  - Locking horde/dav (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 2.0.0alpha5)
  - Locking horde/db (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5)
  - Locking horde/exception (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha4)
  - Locking horde/form (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha6)
  - Locking horde/group (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5)
  - Locking horde/hashtable (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 2.0.0alpha5)
  - Locking horde/history (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5)
  - Locking horde/horde (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 6.0.0alpha7)
  - Locking horde/horde-installer-plugin (v2.5.5)
  - Locking horde/hordectl (v1.0.0alpha4)
  - Locking horde/http (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha8)
  - Locking horde/http_server (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 1.0.0alpha2)
  - Locking horde/icalendar (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5)
  - Locking horde/idna (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 2.0.0alpha5)
  - Locking horde/image (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha6)
  - Locking horde/injector (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha11)
  - Locking horde/javascriptminify (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 2.0.0alpha5)
  - Locking horde/listheaders (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 2.0.0alpha5)
  - Locking horde/lock (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5)
  - Locking horde/log (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha9)
  - Locking horde/logintasks (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5)
  - Locking horde/mail (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5)
  - Locking horde/mime (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha6)
  - Locking horde/mime_viewer (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5)
  - Locking horde/nls (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5)
  - Locking horde/notification (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5)
  - Locking horde/pack (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 2.0.0alpha5)
  - Locking horde/perms (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5)
  - Locking horde/prefs (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha7)
  - Locking horde/routes (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha6)
  - Locking horde/rpc (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha6)
  - Locking horde/secret (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5)
  - Locking horde/serialize (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5)
  - Locking horde/sessionhandler (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha3)
  - Locking horde/share (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5)
  - Locking horde/stream (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 2.0.0alpha5)
  - Locking horde/stream_filter (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5)
  - Locking horde/stream_wrapper (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5)
  - Locking horde/support (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha6)
  - Locking horde/template (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5)
  - Locking horde/test (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha7)
  - Locking horde/text_diff (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5)
  - Locking horde/text_filter (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha4)
  - Locking horde/text_flowed (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5)
  - Locking horde/token (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5)
  - Locking horde/translation (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha3)
  - Locking horde/tree (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5)
  - Locking horde/url (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha6)
  - Locking horde/util (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha8)
  - Locking horde/vfs (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5)
  - Locking horde/view (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5)
  - Locking horde/xml_element (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5)
  - Locking horde/yaml (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5)
  - Locking pear/archive_tar (1.4.14)
  - Locking pear/console_color2 (0.1.2)
  - Locking pear/console_getopt (v1.4.3)
  - Locking pear/console_table (v1.3.1)
  - Locking pear/pear (v1.10.14)
  - Locking pear/structures_graph (v1.1.1)
  - Locking pear/xml_util (v1.4.5)
  - Locking php-extended/polyfill-php80-stringable (1.2.9)
  - Locking psr/container (2.0.2)
  - Locking psr/http-client (1.0.3)
  - Locking psr/http-factory (1.0.2)
  - Locking psr/http-message (2.0)
  - Locking psr/http-server-handler (1.0.2)
  - Locking psr/http-server-middleware (1.0.2)
  - Locking psr/log (3.0.0)
  - Locking sabre/dav (4.6.0)
  - Locking sabre/event (5.1.4)
  - Locking sabre/http (5.1.10)
  - Locking sabre/uri (2.3.3)
  - Locking sabre/vobject (4.5.4)
  - Locking sabre/xml (2.2.6)
Writing lock file
Installing dependencies from lock file (including require-dev)
Package operations: 92 installs, 0 updates, 0 removals
  - Installing horde/horde-installer-plugin (v2.5.5): Extracting archive
  - Installing horde/util (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha8): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/Util
  - Installing horde/translation (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha3): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/Translation
  - Installing horde/exception (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha4): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/Exception
  - Installing horde/compress_fast (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 2.0.0alpha5): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/Compress_Fast
  - Installing horde/cache (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/Cache
  - Installing horde/stream_wrapper (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/Stream_Wrapper
  - Installing horde/support (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha6): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/Support
  - Installing psr/log (3.0.0): Extracting archive
  - Installing php-extended/polyfill-php80-stringable (1.2.9): Extracting archive
  - Installing horde/constraint (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/Constraint
  - Installing horde/log (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha9): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/Log
  - Installing psr/container (2.0.2): Extracting archive
  - Installing horde/injector (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha11): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/Injector
  - Installing horde/controller (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/Controller
  - Installing horde/crypt_blowfish (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 2.0.0alpha4): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/Crypt_Blowfish
  - Installing horde/url (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha6): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/Url
  - Installing horde/css_parser (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 2.0.0alpha5): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/Css_Parser
  - Installing horde/cssminify (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 2.0.0alpha5): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/CssMinify
  - Installing horde/text_flowed (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/Text_Flowed
  - Installing horde/secret (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/Secret
  - Installing horde/idna (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 2.0.0alpha5): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/Idna
  - Installing horde/text_filter (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha4): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/Text_Filter
  - Installing horde/stream_filter (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/Stream_Filter
  - Installing horde/stream (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 2.0.0alpha5): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/Stream
  - Installing horde/mime (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha6): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/Mime
  - Installing horde/mail (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/Mail
  - Installing horde/listheaders (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 2.0.0alpha5): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/ListHeaders
  - Installing horde/nls (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/Nls
  - Installing horde/date (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/Date
  - Installing horde/icalendar (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/Icalendar
  - Installing horde/browser (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/Browser
  - Installing horde/data (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/Data
  - Installing horde/hashtable (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 2.0.0alpha5): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/HashTable
  - Installing horde/db (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/Db
  - Installing horde/history (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/History
  - Installing horde/view (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/View
  - Installing horde/vfs (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/Vfs
  - Installing horde/tree (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/Tree
  - Installing horde/token (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/Token
  - Installing horde/text_diff (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/Text_Diff
  - Installing horde/serialize (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/Serialize
  - Installing horde/xml_element (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/Xml_Element
  - Installing horde/group (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/Group
  - Installing horde/perms (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/Perms
  - Installing sabre/uri (2.3.3): Extracting archive
  - Installing sabre/xml (2.2.6): Extracting archive
  - Installing sabre/vobject (4.5.4): Extracting archive
  - Installing sabre/event (5.1.4): Extracting archive
  - Installing sabre/http (5.1.10): Extracting archive
  - Installing sabre/dav (4.6.0): Extracting archive
  - Installing psr/http-message (2.0): Extracting archive
  - Installing psr/http-factory (1.0.2): Extracting archive
  - Installing psr/http-client (1.0.3): Extracting archive
  - Installing horde/http (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha8): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/Http
  - Installing pear/pear (v1.10.14): Extracting archive
  - Installing pear/xml_util (v1.4.5): Extracting archive
  - Installing pear/structures_graph (v1.1.1): Extracting archive
  - Installing pear/console_getopt (v1.4.3): Extracting archive
  - Installing pear/archive_tar (1.4.14): Extracting archive
  - Installing horde/template (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/Template
  - Installing horde/share (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/Share
  - Installing horde/sessionhandler (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha3): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/SessionHandler
  - Installing horde/prefs (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha7): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/Prefs
  - Installing horde/pack (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 2.0.0alpha5): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/Pack
  - Installing horde/notification (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/Notification
  - Installing horde/compress (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/Compress
  - Installing horde/mime_viewer (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/Mime_Viewer
  - Installing horde/logintasks (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/LoginTasks
  - Installing horde/lock (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/Lock
  - Installing horde/javascriptminify (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 2.0.0alpha5): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/JavascriptMinify
  - Installing psr/http-server-handler (1.0.2): Extracting archive
  - Installing psr/http-server-middleware (1.0.2): Extracting archive
  - Installing horde/http_server (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 1.0.0alpha2): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/Http_Server
  - Installing horde/cli (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha6): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/Cli
  - Installing horde/autoloader (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/Autoloader
  - Installing horde/auth (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha7): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/Auth
  - Installing horde/alarm (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/Alarm
  - Installing horde/core (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha17): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/Core
  - Installing horde/dav (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 2.0.0alpha5): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/Dav
  - Installing horde/rpc (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha6): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/Rpc
  - Installing horde/image (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha6): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/Image
  - Installing horde/form (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha6): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/Form
  - Installing horde/argv (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/Argv
  - Installing horde/horde (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 6.0.0alpha7): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/base
  - Installing horde/yaml (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/Yaml
  - Installing horde/cli_modular (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha5): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/Cli_Modular
  - Installing horde/hordectl (v1.0.0alpha4): Extracting archive
  - Installing horde/routes (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha6): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/Routes
  - Installing horde/test (dev-FRAMEWORK_6_0 as 3.0.0alpha7): Symlinking from /srv/git/horde/Test
  - Installing pear/console_color2 (0.1.2): Extracting archive
  - Installing pear/console_table (v1.3.1): Extracting archive
81 package suggestions were added by new dependencies, use `composer suggest` to see details.
Generating autoload files
Applying /presets for absent files in /var/config
Looking for registry snippets from apps
Writing app configs to /var/config dir
Linking app configs to /web Dir
Linking javascript tree to /web/js
Linking themes tree to /web/themes
1 package you are using is looking for funding.
Use the `composer fund` command to find out more!

This composer environment works just like a regular installation. When you install turba, kronolith or passwd through composer, it will end up linking these apps and their library dependencies from the development tree.

Composer provides an option to copy files from the repositories rather than link the files. This would allow creating archives with artifacts for distribution packaging. The horde-components tool does not yet provide a switch to generate the necessary tweak to the repository files.

bookmark_borderMaintaina’s Horde 6 goes upstream

Posted on by Ralf

It’s been a while. It’s been much too long actually. Let’s look forward though.
I recently started to onboard into FOSS development again. People have been asking for PHP 8.2 support with Horde but capacity to deliver that was very limited. But we’re getting there.

I used the “Maintaina” fork to deliver fixed and upgraded customized versions of Horde beyond what was allowed in Horde’s master branch. It’s time to move forward though. Maintaina used to target PHP 7.4 to PHP 8.1, composer2 based install from a custom satis repo and some quite invasive changes to CalDAV/CardDAV support. Most prominently, Maintaina introduced library level compatibility with several PSRs (container, http middleware, logging) and the all new horde/http_server component.

At the moment I am importing the FRAMEWORK_6_0 branches and the alpha releases based on this branch to horde’s upstream repository. So far I have imported enough libraries to make the Horde Base application barely install from packagist.

Get the current state of affairs

Your magic carpet is:

composer create-project horde/bundle .

Originally I wanted to mimic maintaina’s setup with a separate satis server as a QA stage before release to packagist. I re-considered and dropped the separate satis server. Every update of the development branches and every tagged release is consumed via packagist. I will have to fix some of my tools and workflows to reflect that. The tagged alpha releases still use maintaina’s satis server. The upcoming releases won’t.

Onboarding Procedure


I leave the FRAMEWORK_5_2 and master branches mostly untouched. FRAMEWORK_6_0 is the new default branch on github for anything I am handling. I only edit other branches if they block packagist’s import. Usually I also rebase FRAMEWORK_6_0 on any latest commits of master, but in some cases I only cherry-picked from master branch. In some cases, some entries of the changelog between 2022 late and now (october 2023) might be missing. Pull Requests, bug reports and patches welcome.

What’s next

Before I move forward with the actual applications, I want to make sure the necessary infrastructure is in place. I need to fix some aspects of the FRAMEWORK_6 version of composer. The workflow files in each repo need some review, too. Does PHPUnit and PHPStan still pass? Can we improve management of 130+ repo’s workflows?

Finally https://dev.horde.org should index from packagist, not from the satis server we originally planned to use.

What will become of maintaina repos?

The maintaina repos have had direct contributions from some trusted maintainers from the company I used to work for. They service some customers out of these repos and the related SATIS server so I won’t actively break it. However, with the move to Horde upstream, maintaina has served its purpose for me and I will not actively support the fork anymore. I suggest once everything is ported to upstream, maintaina should be archived. I will need to consult other stakeholders of this fork and the satis server.

Maintenance cost

Over the lifetime of the fork I have explored and applied various strategies for keeping the effort in check. Still, a fork of 100+ repos and the accompanying infrastructure for testing and deploying is a major burden which detracts from actually developing and maintaining code. I am glad I can save on this now and actually contribute to Horde directly in a way that doesn’t slow down activity too much. We now have the chance to speed up the cycle of feedback and releases. I hope this attracts some occassional and regular contributors.

bookmark_borderSatis is now a Composer Plugin.

Posted on by Ralf

Satis is the lightweight, static repository generator for the composer package manager. It enables admins to provide PHP software packages inside airgapped CIs, OS packaging environments and restricted data centers.

Back in August I added a plugin mode to satis to make it work as a regular composer plugin. While working on it, I also fixed some preexisting issues found by static analysis and made it compatible with the recent composer versions 2.3 and 2.4.

This week, the upstream maintainers merged my contribution. I feel a bit satis-fied 😉

Why make it a plugin?

When looking under the hood, it is easy to see that satis always has been some awkward kind of plugin or extension. It literally sits on top of an internal copy of composer. It hooks into its internals in not quite transparent ways, it uses its class and interface organs for its own vital functions. You might call it a parasite that attaches to composer’s body for its own needs. There are downsides to this approach. The first is that you need a private copy of composer. The second is that any refactoring of composer internals likely breaks satis compatibility. That happened some time ago when composer 2.3 and 2.4 were released and not for the first time. Composer has a maturing plugin API with nice, well-defined integration points. It provides some means to overload or amend core functionality but it also provides messaging between core and plugins. I only did the bare minimum work to make satis hook into the plugin API and not break the standalone mode. When installed as a dependency, package resolution will ensure that the API versions used by satis matches the API versions provided by the underlying composer.

I don’t quite understand… What is the benefit?

By itself, this change provides little benefit. It is a feature enabling feature.

  • Satis can be further refactored to make compatibility bread less often
  • Satis can send and receive events from composer or other composer plugins. This enables running satis as part off a custom command. Think passing unit and integration tests of a project and then conditionally updating the staging or canary package repository.
  • Satis’ schema could be amended to make a project’s root package also function as an instruction to build a repository of all dependencies with almost zero configuration. Add this to a workflow or add a collaborator plugin that handles the necessary push/release and you have a powerful tool for CI and developer laptop alike.

But as I went along, I also re-aligned satis with the latest breaking changes inside composer 2.3/2.4. This will benefit users who do not care about the whole plugin story.

What’s next?

With satis 3.0-dev merging this initial change, the next steps are obvious, but not urgent.
Making the new plugin mode play nice with the latest composer was already easier than fixing the standalone mode. Satis still has an internal, now updated dependency copy of composer which is only run in standalone mode.

Standalone mode should be refactored to be just a thin wrapper around composer calling into its satis plugin. Keeping intrusion into composer internals to the bare minimum to hide the builtin commands and re-brand it as satis, this would make breakage on upcoming updates much less likely. Eventually, we can maybe stop carrying around a source code copy of composer at all.

Finally, there is reaping the benefits. I want to leverage composer/satis functionality inside the horde/components tool. Rolling out new versions of horde stuff could be so much easier.

Resources

bookmark_borderHorde/Yaml: Graceful degradation

Posted on by Ralf

Tonight’s work was polishing maintaina’s version of horde/yaml. The test suite and the CI jobs now run successfully both on PHP 7.4 and PHP 8.1. The usual bits of upgrading, you might say.

However, I had my eye on horde/yaml for a reason. I wanted to use it as part of my improvements to the horde composer plugin. Composer famously has been rejecting reading any yaml files for roughly a decade so I need to roll my own yaml reader if I want to deal with horde’s changelog, project definition and a few other files. I wanted to keep the footprint small though, not install half a framework along with the installer utility.

You never walk alone – There is no singular in horde

The library used to pull in quite a zoo of horde friends and I wondered why exactly. The answer was quite surprising. There is no singular in horde. Almost none of the packages can be installed without at least one dependency. In detail, horde/yaml pulled in horde/util because it used exactly one static method in exactly one place. It turned out while that method is powerful and has many use cases, it was used in a way that resulted in a very simple call to a PHP builtin function. I decided whenever the library is not around I will directly call that function and lose whatever benefits the other library might grant over this. This pattern is called graceful degradation. If a feature is missing, deliver the next best available alternative rather than just give up and fail. The util library kept installing although the yaml parser no longer needed it. The parser still depended on the horde/exception package which in turn depended on horde/translation and a few other helpers. Finally horde/test also depended on horde/util. It was time to allow a way out. While all of these are installed in any horde centric use case, anybody who wants only a neat little yaml parser would be very unhappy about that dependency crowd.

Alternative exceptions

The library already used native PHP exceptions in many places but wrapped Horde exceptions for some more intricate cases. While this is all desirable, we can also do without it. If the horde/exception package is available, it will be used. Otherwise one of the builtin exceptions is raised instead. This required to update the test suite to make it run correctly either way. But what is the point if the test suite will install horde/util anyway?

Running tests without horde/test unless it is available

I noticed none of the tests really depended on horde/test functionality. Only some glue code for utilities like the horde/test runner or horde/components really did anything useful. I decided to change the bootstrap code so that it would not outright fail if horde/test was not around. Now the library can be tested by an external phpunit installation, phar or whatever. It does not even need a “composer install” run, only a “composer dump-autoload --dev” to build the autoloader file.

A standalone yaml parser

The final result is a horde/yaml that still provides all integrations when run together with its peer libraries but can be used as a standalone yaml parser if that is desirable. I hope this helps make the package more popular outside the horde context.

Lessons learned

Sometimes less is more. Factoring out aspects for reuse is good. Factoring out aspects into all-powerful utility libraries like “util”, “support” and the likes can glue an otherwise self contained piece of software together with too many other things. That makes them less attractive and harder to work with. Gracefully running nevertheless is one part. The other is redesigning said packages which cover too many aspects at once. This is a topic for another article in another night though.

bookmark_borderHorde Installer: Recent Changes

Posted on by Ralf

The maintaina-com/horde-installer-plugin has seen a few changes lately. This piece is run on every composer install or update in a horde installation. A bug in it can easily break everything from CI pipelines to new horde installations and it is quite time consuming to debug. I usually try to limit changes.

Two codebases merged

In the 2.3.0 release of November 2021 I added a new custom command horde-reconfigure which does all the background magic of looking up or creating config snippets and linking them to the appropriate places, linking javascript from addon packages to web-readable locations and so on. This is essentially the same as the installer plugin does but on demand. A user can run this when he has added new config files to an existing installation. Unfortunately the runtime environment of the installer plugin and the custom command are very different in terms of available IO, known paths and details about the package. I took the opportunity to clean up code, refactor and rethink some parts to do the same things but in a more comprehensible way. As I was aware of the risks I decided to leave the original installer untouched. I got some feedback and used it myself. It seemed to work well enough.

For the 2.4.0 release I decided to finally rebase the installer onto the command codebase and get rid of the older code. It turned out that the reconfigure command was lacking some details which are important in the install use case. Nobody ever complained because these settings are usually not changed/deleted outside install/update phase. As of v2.4.4 the installer is feature complete again.

New behaviour in v2.4

The installer has been moved from the install/update phase to the autoload-dump phase. It will now process the installation as a whole rather than one library at a time. This simplifies things a lot.reviously, the installer ran for each installed package and potentially did a few procedures multiple times. Both the installer and the horde-reconfigure command will now issue some output to the console about their operation and they will process the installation only once with the updated autoloader already configured. The changes will now also apply on removal of packages or on other operations which require a rewrite of the autoloader. The registry snippets now include comments explaining that they are autogenerated and how to override the autoconfigured values.

Outlook to 2.5 or 3.0

The composer API has improved over the last year. We need to be reasonably conservative to support OS distribution packaged older versions of composer. At some point in the future however I want to have a look at using composer for simplifying life

  • Improve Theme handling: Listing themes and their scope (global and app specific), setting default theme of an installation
  • Turning a regular installation into a development setup for specific libraries or apps
  • Properly registering local packages into composer’s package registry and autoloader (useful for distribution package handling).

Both composer’s native APIs and the installer plugin can support improving a horde admin’s or developer’s life:

  • Make horde’s own “test” utility leverage composer to show which optional packages are needed for which drivers or configurations
  • Expose some obvious installation health issues on the CLI.
  • Only expose options in the config UI which are supported by current PHP extensions and installed libraries
  • Expose a check if a database schema upgrade is needed after a composer operation, both human readable and machine consumable. This should not autorun.

The actual feature code may be implemented in separate libraries and out of scope for the installer itself. As a rule, horde is supposed to be executable without composer but this is moving out of focus more and more.

bookmark_borderOctober Review: TOTP in Horde

Posted on by Ralf

I have been working on multiple things recently.

Kronolith Web UI: Appointment Cancellation Bug

Fix an annoying bug where internal user attendees get cancellation mails when an appointment is updated by the owner. This only seems to happen from the Web UI, not from CalDAV. I already analysed how this is happening. The fix is going to be a little bigger as I do not want to invest in the legacy infrastructure (socalled “Imples”) and use the opportunity to use a more modern approach. Work is in progress.

New Material UI based frontend for passwd.

I have worked with the team on a Material Design based UI. It uses ReactJs and Typescript and the new horde/http_server library and it is very different from existing Horde UIs. Do not expect it to blend well with the existing horde look&feel. The whole thing is a proof of concept and is an alien as the DIMP UI was back in Horde 3. This proof of concept still lives in a public feature branch and if you want to try it, you need to enable a new setting in the Preferences Screen.

Two-Factor support in Horde Base and a TOTP library

More and more online services start using two-factor authentication for improved security. Along with a password, users have to enter some passcode they read from a keychain fob device or from an app on their phones (like Google Authenticator).

I have started a new library horde/otp which implements TOTP and other styles of passcodes used as a secondary authentication factor. The library needs some additional glue code in horde/core and horde/base which still has to be built. I would have liked to finish this in October but there is only so much time.

Improved horde-installer-plugin

The composer plugin for Horde has received some refactoring and enhancements. The current feature branch offers a custom command in the composer CLI . This custom command rebuilds the relevant configuration files when you move your Horde installation after running the install/update commands. There are also some minor changes to the way configurations are written. End users should not notice.

DNS library

B1 Systems have finally opensourced a DNS library for the Horde ecosystem. It has been used internally for some years. The library can serve as the DNS building block of an IPAM system, but it also has an adapter to apply changes to the Amazon Route 53 service.

PHPStan support

Beginning this month, libraries and apps will gradually introduce the static analyzer tool phpstan. The tool will run as part of the CI pipeline and detect various types of code imperfections which potentially can mean hard-to-detect bugs. The findings will be addressed as time permits.

bookmark_borderPEAR down – Taking Horde to Composer

Posted on by Ralf

Since Horde 4, the Horde ecosystem heavily relied on the PEAR infrastructure. Sadly, this infrastructure is in bad health. It’s time to add alternatives.

Everybody has noticed the recent PEAR break-in.

A security breach has been found on the http://pear.php.net webserver, with a tainted go-pear.phar discovered. The PEAR website itself has been disabled until a known clean site can be rebuilt. A more detailed announcement will be on the PEAR Blog once it’s back online. If you have downloaded this go-pear.phar in the past six months, you should get a new copy of the same release version from GitHub (pear/pearweb_phars) and compare file hashes. If different, you may have the infected file.

While I am writing these lines, pear.php.net is down. Retrieval links for individual pear packages are down. Installation of pear packages is still possible from private mirrors or linux software distribution packages (openSUSE, Debian, Ubuntu). Separate pear servers like pear.horde.org are not directly affected. However, a lot of pear software relies on one or many libraries from pear.php.net – it’s a tough situation. A lot of software projects have moved on to composer, an alternative solution to dependency distribution. However, some composer projects have dependency on PEAR channels.

I am currently submitting some changes to Horde upstream to make Horde libs (both released and from git) more usable from composer projects.
Short-term goal is making use of some highlight libraries easier in other contexts. For example, Horde_ActiveSync and Horde_Mail, Horde_Smtp, Horde_Imap_Client are really shiny. I use Horde_Date so much I even introduced it in some non-horde software – even though most functionality is also somewhere in php native classes.

The ultimate goal however is to enable horde groupware installations out of composer. This requires more work to be done. There are several issues.

  • The db migration tool checks for some pear path settings during runtime https://github.com/horde/Core/pull/2 Most likely there are other code paths which need to be addressed.
  • Horde Libraries should not be web readable but horde apps should be in a web accessible structure. Traditionally, they are installed below the base application (“horde dir”) but they can also be installed to separate dirs.
  • Some libraries like Horde_Core contain files like javascript packages which need to be moved or linked to a location inside another package. Traditionally, this is handled either by the “git-tools” tool linking the code directory to a separate web directory or by pear placing various parts of the package to different root paths. Composer doesn’t have that out of the box.

Horde already has been generating composer manifest files for quite a while. Unfortunately, they were thin wrappers around the existing pear channel. The original generator even took all package information from the pear manifest file (package.xml) and converted it. Which means, it relied on a working pear installation. I wrote an alternative implementation which directly converts from .horde.yml to composer.json – Calling the packages by their composer-native names. As horde packages have not been released on packagist yet, the composer manifest also includes repository links to the relevant git repository. This should later be disabled for releases and only turned on in master/head scenarios. Releases should be pulled from packagist authority, which is much faster and less reliant on existing repository layouts. https://github.com/horde/components/pull/3

To address the open points, composer needs to be amended. I currently generate the manifests using package types “horde-library” and “horde-application” – I also added a package type “horde-theme” for which no precedent exists yet. Composer doesn’t understand these types unless one adds an installer plugin https://github.com/maintaina-com/installers. Once completed and accepted, this should be upstreamed into composer/installers. The plugin currently handles installing apps to appropriate places rather than /vendor/ – however, I think we should avoid having a super-special case “horde-base” and default to installing apps directly below the project dir. Horde base should also live on the same hierarchy. This needs some additional tools and autoconfiguration to make it convenient. Still much way to go.

That said, I don’t think pear support should be dropped anytime soon. It’s the most sensible way for distribution packaging php software. As long as we can bear the cost involved in keeping it up, we should try.