Development and Integration Environment

The development environment, the integration chain and the distribution build consist of a collection of programs, scripts and tools to integrate and build the framework's server platform, the server libraries, the runtime system, the application daemons and the source and binary distributions.

• Operating System Setup
• Standardized Directory Structure
• Unix Toolchain and Shell Environment
• Platform Build with RPM
• Content Tracker
• Management Scripts

Operating System Setup

The current version of Maxscape is built on Ubuntu and runs on Debian as well. To setup the operating system for Maxscape some additional tools need to be installed and several Unix users have to be configured.

Standardized Directory Structure

The programs of a Maxscape distribution live in the '/opt' folder. The Maxscape installation root is '/opt/maxscape/'. The symbolic '/maxscape' link points to this root to abbreviate the installation's root path.

> ls /opt
/opt
  ...
  apache       Apache server
  mysql        Mysql database
  maxscape     Maxscape server
  perl         Perl interpreter
  ssl          Open SSL 
  ...

> ls -ld /maxscape
/maxscape -> /opt/maxscape/<version>/

> ls /maxscape
/opt/maxscape/<version>
  cvssh               Shell scripts around CVS.
  bin                 Administration and management scripts.
  etc                 Configuration files.
  lib                 Libraries.
  local               Local data.
  man                 Manual pages.
  sbin                Maxscape start scripts and deamons.
  server              Application server root folder.
    <Application Server>
      bin             Place to put helpful scripts.
      cgi-bin         CGI scripts.
      docs            Document root of the site.
      etc             Configuration files
      lib             Modules and functions
      logs            Link to the log files
      tables          Text dump of the application server's database tables
      ...
  var                 Variable files and folders like log files and user homes.
  ...

Platform Build with RPM

Though Apache and Perl are part of a standard Linux OS, it might be required to build them from their sources to add the features necessary for the use with Maxscape. For example, to build Apache with mod_fcgi and mod_perl and to build Perl with a source encryption feature.

The build of the web server platform (Apache, Perl with CPAN modules and maybe a database) is automated by the use of the Red Hat Package Manager (RPM). So, the integration of new tool versions and the adaptation to other operating systems is relatively easy and reproducible.

Note, that the platform build has been moved to the Maxdaemon project.

Content Tracking and Version Control

Maxscape source files are developed and managed under the control of the concurrent versions system (CVS) for historical reasons. Some little, but very helpful scripts are added to ease the use of CVS to keep track of the change history and to create distribution update tarballs.

Maxscape Shell Tools

Maxscape comes with some little scripts build around the content trackers to ease development and integration. Most notably there are the 'sp' (set project) and the 'gp' (grep project) scripts. The 'sp' script sets the shell environment of a configuration and the 'gp' script finds the files of the occurence of a string in all of the Maxscape's sources.

Makefile to Build the Maxscape Distributions and the Backups

A central makefile builds the Maxscape distributions and is used for backup purposes.

Content Management Servers with Web Browser Surfaces

There is the administration server with the name 'Webserver' and the content manager components within the application servers, itselfs. They provide a convenient way to work with the file system as well as with the content and code stored in the database. All you need is a web browser.