I have written a number of web oriented applications, and have come across common needs. These subsystems are packaged as separate thingies and can be pulled into new applications at will.

In order to support this modularization, I have written a small suite of programs which updates a given web site from the current distribution, but avoids overwriting local changes.

These programs are:

• SupportBin/update. This program is the heart of the update process. You can chdir to the main directory of the application on the web server and type make update and update that application. Alternatively, you can go to some other directory and type ..../SupportBin/update and make a copy of the application in that directory. Last, you can take this file to another machine, and assuming Perl and appropriate modules are installed, invoke the program and get a new application.

  There are provisions for having a release site, as well as development sites. It is expected that most people will use the release sites for extracting update information.

• SupportBin/check.data. This program is used to ensure that the needed files end up in the final application. It also ensures that all of the definitions in Config/defs.wh exist on the final application.
• SupportBin/checksum. This program is used to determine if a file has been locally changed. If a file is locally changed, the distribution file will be copied to a .dist file, and a .diff file will be created to show the differences.
• SupportBin/localize. This program changes some fixed strings to be appropriate to the current environment.

In normal use, you will not need to get the update package by itself as it will be included by whichever application you are using. However, if you want the packages, you can get one of the following:

• update. This is just the update program, which should be enough to bootstrap.
• update.tar.gz. This is the file that the update program uses as data for other applications.
• updatea.tar.gz. This is the update application. This is used to maintain this page.
• fulldist.tar.gz. This is a full tar file. You are on your own for installation.

At the start of the SupportBin/update program there is a table which describes where to get each of the support packages for an application. Each application is expected to take the update program and modify this table to contain all of the information needed to build the application.

If you have any question about the Update package, send mail to update@mordred.ao.com.

You can find other programs in Regan's Cornvalley Archive.