New appliance: Foodsoft

[wvengen]

Foodsoft is web-based software for managing non-profit food coops (product catalog, ordering, accounting, job scheduling).

• Repository: https://github.com/foodcoops/turnkeylinux-foodsoft
• Tracker: https://github.com/turnkeylinux/tracker/wiki/Foodsoft
• Upstream: https://github.com/foodcoops/foodsoft
• by @wvengen (also maintainer of upstream)

This Rails appliance is a little unusual in the sense that two versions of the app are shipped, with a choice at firstboot. (In the future I might perhaps add an option to switch between the two at a later time.)

One thing that's a little unclear to me about tkbam: do logfiles need to be filtered out?

(a new upstream version will be released the 25th of June, I'm submitting it now so that, perhaps, the TurnKey Linux appliance can be mentioned in the release announcement; let's see :) )

[lirazsiri]

Foodsoft looks awesome, and the world could definitely use more food cooperatives. This looks like a labor of love. Kudos for developing it and for going the extra mile and developing a TurnKey version that makes it easier to deploy.

We'll be rolling this into the upcoming maintenance release and putting in an extra mention on the newsletter and blog announcements.

Regarding excluding Foodsoft's logs from TKLBAM, if you put the logs in /var/log (and you probably should) then you don't have to exclude anything because TKLBAM doesn't backup that directory by default. See the core profile (which all profiles inherit from) for details:

https://github.com/turnkeylinux/tklbam-profiles/blob/master/core

[wvengen]

Thank you, that's awesome.

Foodsoft's logs are in a standard Rails location, would it be an idea to symlink /var/www/*/log somewhere into /var/log (making sure that permissions are fine) within the Rails profile; or add the Rails log directory to the rails default tklbam profile? (And, while we're at it, add a logrotate config - if it isn't there already.)

[lirazsiri]

What we've done with other integrations is try to get them to conform to Debian conventions as much as possible. Consistency tends to make things easier. So a symlink to redirect logs from the Rails profile to /var/log/foodsoft + a log rotation script sounds like the way to go.

[wvengen]

I will update this when turnkeylinux/common#6 (or something similar) is merged.

[JedMeister]

@wvengen As I just posted on another thread; (it's verbatim cut & paste sorry; but equally applies to you so hope that you're not offended).:

Sorry it has taken us so long so far... TBH it is embarrassing 😦 And I imagine that having to wait this long to see code you wrote actually make it to a release must be frustrating! I imagine that it certainly wouldn't be very motivating...

Anyway, we are (finally) working on a new release (v14.0) that we won't be getting sidetracked from! (I promise!)

I was just going to get someone else to update your code for the v14.0 release (with the latest version of Foodsoft) but thought perhaps I should check with you first. Are you at all interested in updating your appliance or would you like me to get someone else to do it?

[JedMeister]

PS I will be getting common Rails stuff updated fairly soon and I can post back when that's happened if you want? Or just get someone else to work on it...?

[wvengen]

Thanks, that great news! Great to read what's improved and why in the release notes. And no problem for the wait - there's always more to do than is possible, and one needs to make choices.

I'll be happy to look at the appliance for v14.0. It'd be useful if there's a way to obtain a new tkldev instance (since building it from v13.0 may not be so straightforward - trying now).

I suppose the new ruby version will be 2.1.5? There are some gems requiring ruby 2+ nowadays. (And the Ruby Enterprise notes and customizations can be removed, I guess.) Looking forward to any tkl-rails changes!

[JedMeister]

Awesome! And thanks for your patient and understanding attitude! 😄

Yes there is a new v14.0RC1 TKLDev iso (263MB 64bit ISO). I haven't yet publicly announced it but some people already know about it so please feel free to have a look...

TBH though I expect that the Rails appliance is a little broken ATM (it hasn't been touched yet...). And yes it will use the Debian Jessie default version which will hopefully make installing Foodsoft (and other apps) a little neater...

Regardless please feel free to either have a play and note (and fix if you want/can) any issues (with any of the appliances, although ATM you'll need to build them yourself with TKLDev). As I said though hopefully someone will be on to Rails within the next day or so...

[wvengen]

Thanks!
@JedMeister building the Passenger Apache2 module now requires installing libssl-dev, which was missing in common's plan/turnkey/rails. May be helpful when looking at the rails appliance.
Then probably also a2dissite default -> a2dissite 000-default in conf/rails (among other appliances) - but I'm testing that right now.