avoid symlinks pointing outside git repo

[mblakele]

Can we put our heads together and figure out a way to avoid having symlinks like src/download and src/config/disqus-info.xml in git? They point outside the git directory, which causes errors when roxy tries to deploy to a modules database.

I think one solution might be to git rm both, then add them to .gitignore and recreate them where needed. That way the actual content won't get into git, but symlinks or the necessary data can live wherever it's needed.

[mblakele]

I've been thinking about how to remove the need for each of these symlinks, so that deployment to a modules database would be fully functional.

For downloads, the existing rewrite.xqm code expects the downloads to be on the filesystem. I think we should leave that unchanged. But we could add a configuration parameter, maybe in server-urls.xml, to specify the filesystem path to the downloads. The rewriter could be taught use that parameter if it's available. Then we could remove the symlink for src/download.

For disqus I'd suggest adding code in app_specific.rb. This would use a property to specify the path to disqus-info.xml. If the property is missing, nothing happens. If the property is present, we copy the file into the modules database at /config/. Then we could remove the symlink for disqus-info.xml.

We might also consider using something like https://github.com/AGWA/git-crypt to keep an encrypted copy of disqus-info.xml in git. But I'm not sure if that would end up being any easier than the roxy-based approach.