Configuring Your Workstation
Once your workstation has been installed, it is time for you
to configure it. The configuration of your workstation
consists on defining your workplace, download a working copy
from &TCAR; and finally, run the prepare
functionality of centos-art.sh script to
install/update the software needed, render images, create
links, and anything else needed.
Define Your Workplace
Once you've installed the workstation and it is up and
running, you need to register the user name you'll use for
working. In this task you need to use the commands
useradd and passwd to
create the user name and set a password for it, respectively.
These commands require administrative privileges to be
executed, so you need to login as root
superuser for doing so.
Do not use the root
username for regular
tasks inside your working copy of &TCAR;. This is dangerous
and might provoke unreversable damages to your workstation.
When you've registered your user name in the workstation, it
provides an identifier for you to open a user's session in the
workstation and a place to store the information you produce,
as well. This place is known as your home directory and is
unique for each user registered in the workstation. For
example, if you register the user name john in your
workstation, your home directory would be located at /home/john/.
At this point it is important to define where to download the
working copy of &TCAR; inside your home directory. This
desition deserves special attention and should be implemented
carefully in order to grant a standard environment that could
be distributed. Let's see some alternatives.
Different absolute paths
Consider that you store your working copy under /home/john/Projects/artwork/ and
I store mine under /home/al/Projects/artwork/, we'll
end up refering the same files inside our working copies
through different absolute paths. This alternative generates
a contradiction when files which hold path information inside
are committed up to the central repository from different
working copies. The contradiction comes from the question:
which is the correct absolute path to use inside such files,
yours or mine? (None of them is, of course.)
One unique absolute path
Another case would be that where you and I ourselves use one
unique home directory (e.g., /home/centos/Projects/artwork/)
to store the working copy of &TCAR; in our own workstations,
but configure the subversion client to use different user
names to commit changes up from the working copy to the
central repository. This alternative might be not so good in
situations where you and I have to share the same workstation.
In such cases, it would be required that we both share the
password information of the same system user (the
centos
user in our example) which, in
addition, gives access to that user's subversion client
configuration and this way provokes the whole sense of using
different subversion credentials for committing changes to be
lost.
Different absolute paths through dynamic expansion
Most of the absolute paths we use inside the working copy are
made of two parts, one dynamic and one relative fixed. The
dynamic part is the home directory of the current user and its
value can be retrived from the $HOME
environment variable. The fixed part of the path is the one
we set inside the repositroy structure itself as a matter of
organization. What we need here is to find a way to expand
variables inside files that don't support variable expansion.
This alternative had worked rather fine when we produce
produce PNG files from SVG files and XTHML from DocBook files,
but the same is not true for absolute paths inside files that
are used as in their permanent state inside the repository
(e.g., CSS files and other files similar in purpose).
Different absolute paths, dynamic expansion, symbolic
links, relative links, and environment variables
With this solution it is possible to store working copies of
&TCAR; on different locations inside the same workstation
without lose relation between files. Here we use the
TCAR_WORKDIR environment variable to set the location of the
working copy inside the workstation. Later the centos-art.sh
scripts uses this value as reference to determine where the
working copy is. This value is also the one used for dynamic
expansion inside design models and other similar files. In the
case of web projects where different components are required
to produce the final content, we create symbolic links between
them and use relative paths so it is possible to reuse them
and retain the relation between them in different contexts.
For example, lets consider the organization of XHTML manuals
rendered from DocBook source files. When you render a DocBook
manual inside &TCAR; it creates XHTML files. This XHTML files
use images and common style sheets for better presentation.
Both of these images and styles components live outside the
XHTML structure so, in order to make them available
relatively to the XHTML structure, we created symbolic links
from the XHTML structure to the outside location where they
are in. The creation of symbolic links takes place
automatically when each DockBook manual is rendered through
centos-art.sh, which uses the value of
TCAR_WORKDIR environment variable as reference to determine
the absolute path of the working copy.
Bacause absolute paths are no longer stored inside permanent
files and centos-art.sh script uses the
TCAR_WORKDIR environment variable to determine where the
working copy is stored in the workstation, it should be safe
to download working copies of &TCAR; anywhere in the
workstation. One just have to be sure that the value of
TCAR_WORKDIR environment variable does match the location of
the working copy you are using.
Download Your Working Copy
In order to use &TCAR; you need to download a working copy
from the central repository into your workstation. To
download such working copy use the following command:
svn co https://projects.centos.org/svn/artwork ~/
This command will create your working copy inside your home
directory, specifically in a directory named artwork. Inside this directory
you will find all the files you need to work with inside
&TCAR;. If you want to have your working copy in a location
different to that one shown above, see .
The first time you download the working copy it contains no
image files, nor documentation, or localized content inside
it. This is because all the files provided in the working copy
are source files (e.g., the files needed to produce other
files) and it is up to you to render them in order to produce
the final files (e.g., images and documentation) used to
implement &TCPCVI;.
Configure Administrative Tasks
Most of the administrative tasks you need to perform in your
working copy of &TCAR; are standardized inside the
prepare functionality of
centos-art.sh script. Inside
centos-art.sh
script, all administrative task are invoked through the
sudo command. Thus, in order for the
centos-art.sh script to perform
administrative tasks, you need to update the
sudo's configuration in a way that such
administrative actions be allowed.
At time of this writing the centos-art.sh
script implements just one administrative task, that is
package management. Nevertheless, in the future, other
administrative tasks might be included as well (e.g.,
installing themes locally from the working copy for testing
purposes.).
To update the sudo's configuration, execute
the visudo command as root
.
Later, uncoment the Cmnd_Alias related to
SOFTWARE
and add a line for your username
allowing software commands. This configuration is illustrated
in .
The /etc/sudoers configuration file
/etc/sudoers configuration file
## Installation and management of software
Cmnd_Alias SOFTWARE = /bin/rpm, /usr/bin/up2date, /usr/bin/yum
## Next comes the main part: which users can run what software on
## which machines (the sudoers file can be shared between multiple
## systems).
## Syntax:
##
## user MACHINE=COMMANDS
##
## The COMMANDS section may have other options added to it.
##
## Allow root to run any commands anywhere
root ALL=(ALL) ALL
## Allow the centos user to run installation and management of
## software anywhere.
al ALL=(ALL) SOFTWARE
Run Preparation Tool
Once you've both downloaded a working copy from &TCAR;
and configured the sudo's configuration
file successfully, run the prepare
functionality of centos-art.sh script to
complete the configuration process using the following
command:
~/artwork/trunk/Scripts/Bash/centos-art.sh prepare
To know more about the prepare
functionality of centos-art.sh script, see
.
Changing Your Working Copy Default Path
By default your working copy should be store in your home
directory, specifically in the location ~/artwork. This location may not
be the final location where you want to have your working copy
in situations where you are working on several projects at the
same time or you already have a define location to organize
your projects inside your home directory. Thus, you may need
to change the default location of your working copy to a more
appropriate location.
The default path to your working copy is controlled by the
TCAR_WORKDIR environment variable. This
variable is firstly defined in your personal profile after
running the prepare functionality of
centos-art.sh script. So, to change the
path of your working copy correctly, do the following:
Create the parent directory you will use to store your working
copy. For example:
mkdir -p ~/Projects/CentOS
Move the currently downloaded working copy from ~/artwork to
your new location. For example:
mv ~/artwork ~/Projects/CentOS/
Edit ~/.bash_profile file to set the new
location (without trailing slash) of your working copy as value
of TCAR_WORKDIR environment variable. For example:
TCAR_WORKDIR=${HOME}/Projects/CentOS/artwork
Do log out from your active user's seesion and do log in again
so the environment changes take effect. Or just update the
current environment information by running the following
command:
. ~/.bash_profile
Update internal links by running the following command:
${TCAR_WORKDIR}/trunk/Scripts/Bash/centos-art.sh prepare --links