WebApp: Installation

There is more complete documentation on how to install and configure WebApp in the PODs. This document is just meant as a quick reference for the forgetful.

I'm writing it because I cannot count the number of times I've gone to e.g. the djbdns installation help page after not being able to remember the simplest of instructions, even after having followed them dozens of times. Darn that short-term memory loss!

Anyway... what was I saying?

Ah, right. Quick install.

#1: Catch Your Rabbit

Go to the downloads page and get yourself a tarball. The most recent one is generally a good idea.

Unpack the tarball you download, e.g.

$ tar zxvf WebApp-0.6.2.tar.gz

There should now be a directory named WebApp-0.6.2 in whatever directory you executed the above command. For the rest of this document, I'll assume that you have:

$ cd WebApp-0.6.2

#2: Makefile.PL

Run the Makefile.PL in whatever way makes sense. Here's what I often do on an OpenBSD system:

$ perl Makefile.PL PREFIX=/usr/local INSTALLDIRS=site

This keeps things under /usr/local, and doesn't dirty up other parts of the filesystem. It makes me feel tidy. Tidy is good.

There should be no errors from this command. If there are, try posting them to the webapp-dev@cluefactory.com mailing list (after reading the FAQ, of course *cough*).

#3: Build and install

Under most modern Unix-like operating systems, the following two commands do the trick:

$ make
$ sudo make install

This should get the base WebApp system installed. You can check by trying the following command:

$ webapp version
WebApp Version 0.6.2
Copyright (c) 2002-2006 by Sean Levy <snl@cluefactory.com>.
All Rights Reserved.

This program is distributed under a BSD-style license. try
    $ webapp license
to see the whole thing.  Be a good Netizen, support your local BSD Unix!

Fin.