add a Dockerfile for development

Dockerfile

@@ -0,0 +1,29 @@
+from ubuntu:12.10
+maintainer Greg Weber
+
+RUN apt-get update
+RUN apt-get install -y haskell-platform
+
+RUN cabal update && install Cabal cabal-install
+
+# Postgres
+RUN apt-get install -y postgresql postgresql-contrib
+
+# Sqlite
+RUN apt-get install -y sqlite3 libsqlite3-dev
+
+# Redis
+RUN apt-get install -y redis-server
+
+# MongoDB
+RUN apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv 7F0CEB10
+RUN echo "deb http://downloads-distro.mongodb.org/repo/ubuntu-upstart dist 10gen" >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/10gen.list
+RUN mkdir -p /data/db
+
+RUN apt-get update
+RUN apt-get install -y  mongodb-10gen || echo "upstart error expected"
+
+# MySQL
+RUN apt-get install -y mysql-server || echo "need to run mysql --configure"
+
+# RUN cd /home/persistent && cabal sandbox init && cabal install

README.md

@@ -1,7 +1,30 @@
-A Haskell "ORM". Supports PostgreSql, Sqlite, and MongoDB.
-
 ## Learn more: http://yesodweb.com/book/persistent
 
+A Haskell datastore. Datastores are often referred to as "ORM"s. While 'O' traditionally means object, the concept can be generalized as:
+
+    avoidance of boilerplate serialization
+
+In addition , the ORM concept is a way to make what is usually an un-typed driver type-safe.
+In dynamic languages rather than compile time errors, safety comes from creating specific dynamic errors rather than sending non-sense queries to the database.
+
+Persistent's goal is to catch every possible error at compile-time, and it comes close to that.
+
+# Backend agnostic
+
+Supports PostgreSql, Sqlite, MySQL, MongoDB, and Redis.
+
+Persistent is designed to be adaptable to any datastore, and to allow multiple datastores to be used simultaneously.
+The serialization layer should be adaptable to any datastore.
+
+Providing a universal query layer will always be limiting.
+A major limitation for SQL databases is that the persistent library does not directly provide joins.
+However, you can use [Esqueleto](http://hackage.haskell.org/package/esqueleto) with Persistent's serialization to write type-safe SQL queries.
+Key-value stores such as Redis can be used with persistent, but only fill out the key-value portion of the API (PersistStore) rather than the query portion (PersistQuery).
+
+Persistent provides several hooks to create backend-specific functionality.
+One can always fall back to using the raw database driver or other lower-level or less type-safe libraries and can utilize Persistent for un-serializing the database response to a Haskell record.
+
+
 ## Install from source
 
 Install the Haskell Platform first. Clone this repo and run:

development.md

@@ -12,9 +12,33 @@ Now run with
 
     cabal build && dist/build/test/test
 
-## Different backends
+
+# Backends
 
 By default the sqlite backend is tested.
-To test other backends, use the CPP options. To test mongoDB use add this CPP option or uncomment this in the cabal file:
+To test other backends, you can give a flag described in persisten-test.
+
+    cabal configure -fmongodb --enable-tests
+
+
+## Installing backends
+
+You can develop just against your preferred backend and the community should help sort out issues with others.
+
+However, we have a Dockerfile that you can use to install all the databases.
+
+    sudo docker build .
+
+To run this you need to fill in the brackets on this step:
+
+    sudo docker run -v <absolute-path-to-persisten>:/home/persistent -t -i <image-hash-from-docker-build> /bin/bash
+
+This only works on Linux, but you can use Linux on Mac or Windows through Virtualbox.
+
+After building you still need to start up the databases in the background (other than sqlite) that you are testing.
+For example:
+
+    mongod --smallfiles &
 
-    -- cpp-options: -DWITH_MONGODB
+Docker does not support upstart since it is designed to run a single process, in this case /bin/bash which you can launch other processes with.
+In the future we can setup Angel to run all the databases.