Project Canasta/Infrastructure solution

This is an informal RFC/RFP for finding/creating a system to generate downloadables for the project known as Project Canasta. Project Canasta, in brief, is aimed at enabling easy-installed MediaWiki instances that contain not just MediaWiki but also skins and extension, and a set of wiki pages, that together can fulfill some use case. Part of that task involves finding, or creating, a solution to generate these downloadables.

The solution should meet as many as possible of the following criteria:

(The person generating the downloadable is referred to here as a "creator", and the person downloading it is referred as an "administrator".)


 * The solution should let the creator take an existing MediaWiki instance (already generated - automatically generating this "master" instance, if it is going to be automatically generated, is a separate component of Project Canasta), and then generate a downloadable file or image from that instance. That file/image, when downloaded, should allow an administrator to simply run some command, and then, with a minimum of options presented, the script should generate an entire MediaWiki instance, as well as a database that is set up and initialized for both MediaWiki and all the installed extensions. This should include having a database user and password that are generated - perhaps in real time by the script - and then stored in LocalSettings.php.


 * Ideally the creator can specify whether or not this downloadable should additionally include instances of PHP, a DB system and a web server (e.g., MySQL and Apache), and potentially an operating system as well (e.g., CentOS). That way, administrators will have their choice of whether they want a container that includes all of these, or whether they want to use their own existing systems and simply download/install MediaWiki.


 * Additionally, the solution should be fully open source, and it should be relatively easy for a creator to run on their system.

Please create sections below for any existing solutions that could be used for this purpose, briefly explaining how they work and whether they could be made to fit all of these criteria.

Meza Approach
Meza is a (M)ediaWiki easy (EZ) (A)dministration program which enables the easy install and maintenance of a complete, fully-featured, ready-to-use MediaWiki application.

Prerequisites

 * To use meza all you need is a clean target system that has RHEL8 (or Rocky Linux 8) installed and has access to the Internet.

Installation (Centos/RHEL)
If you already have a server that meets Meza's requirements, run the following 4 commands in your server's terminal to install Meza.

This will setup a demo wiki with the user  with password.

Visit your fully installed and pre-configured wiki at: https://localhost

What next?
Running the 4 commands above will establish a ready to use wiki-farm with 1 demo wiki pre-configured with lots of common extensions (such as VE, SMW, Page Forms, and SRF) and some standardized wiki content (like templates, properties, forms, and categories). From here you can customize the common configuration of the whole farm or just specific wikis and then put these changes into effect just by re-running the simple command:.

Additionally, you can use meza to simply and quickly do many site administrator tasks such as: See: Meza/Commands and Meza for more info.
 * Perform updates
 * Create new wikis (and delete existing wikis)
 * Add/Remove extensions
 * Perform backups

Linux/Docker: dataspectsSystemBuilder approach
''The principles and concepts of the following use case steps are implemented and I use them almost every week. For now and in the context of Canasta, they shall represent my current opinion of an optimal integration/abstraction level.''

Creator
The CreatorProcess (e.g., BlueSpice, dataspectsSystemBuilder, ...) shall deliver the following CreatorArtefacts components:


 * a MediaWiki root folder $MEDIAWIKI_ROOT_FOLDER containing a certain MediaWiki Canasta version (see below)
 * a corresponding database $DATABASE_NAME at $MYSQL_HOST used by $MYSQL_USER identified by $MYSQL_USER_PASSWORD
 * a docker-compose.yml file (e.g. https://github.com/dataspects/mediawiki-manager/blob/main/docker-compose.yml)
 * a Dockerfile for the Apache container

This represents a certain version, e.g. mediawiki-canasta-1.35.0-201215-* (see below), consisting of:


 * a specific MediaWiki core version
 * a specific set of versioned MediaWiki extensions and skins
 * a specific LocalSettings.php configuration

MediaWiki Canasta versioning ideas

 * mediawiki-canasta-1.35.0-201215-single-standard
 * mediawiki-canasta-1.35.0-201215-single-crm
 * mediawiki-canasta-1.35.0-201215-single-documentManagement

Packer
The PackerProcess shall deliver the following PackerArtefacts in the $MEDIAWIKI_CANASTA_DISTRIBUTION_FOLDER:

produced by the following bash file build-distribution-package.sh:
 * a $MEDIAWIKI_DISTRIBUTION_ARCHIVE
 * a $MEDIAWIKI_DATABASE_DUMP in the $MEDIAWIKI_DISTRIBUTION_ARCHIVE



Installer
See https://github.com/dataspects/mediawiki-manager

Upgrader
See https://github.com/dataspects/mediawiki-manager

BlueSpice
BlueSpice is a MediaWiki distribution including >100 extensions.

Packaging
For packaging, we use composer. Extensions must be registered with a composer registry. Many MediaWiki extensions already are registered in the public composer registry, but it is also possible to maintain a separate registration.

For package definition, we use a set of composer files which are read by MediaWikis composer merge tool.

Example:

This includes the ldap stack. { "repositories": [{ "type": "composer", "url": "https://packages.bluespice.com/" }], "require": { "mediawiki/auth-remoteuser": "2.*", "mediawiki/ldap-authentication-2": "1.*", "mediawiki/ldap-authorization": "1.*", "mediawiki/ldap-groups": "1.*", "mediawiki/ldap-provider": "1.*", "mediawiki/ldap-user-info": "1.*" } } (Source: https://github.com/hallowelt/mediawiki/blob/3.1.x/_bluespice/build/bluespice-ldap/composer.json)

The definitions are currently maintained in a forked repository of MediaWiki, which fetches the MediaWiki changes on a regular basis and adds the composer files into a separate folder.

The repository can be found here (current production branch): https://github.com/hallowelt/mediawiki/tree/3.1.x

Build
In order to build, we clone the repository, execute composer install and then package the folder into a tarball.

Deploy
The tarball is the basis for a Docker image, which can be found here and is fully functional out of the box:


 * Docker image definition: https://github.com/hallowelt/docker-bluespice-free
 * Docker image in repository: https://hub.docker.com/r/bluespice/bluespice-free