Use symlinks in Processwire installation

[rkraemer]

Dear ProcessWire Support,

I am new at ProcessWire and I am trying the new 3.x development versions. As the new version 3.0.8 devns was new released, I test if was possible to move to the new version by linking the wire folder and the index.php and .htaccess as symlink from a version repository with the different pw versions.

But this does not work, it seems that pw is not able to use the symlinks. The apache directory configuration contains the required setting: Options -FollowSymLinks +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch

Is it principally be possible to use symlinks and when what must be configured?

Best regards

Ralf Krämer

[flydev]

Maybe a dumb question, but do you have the directive AllowOverride None in your setting ?

[justb3a]

Of course PW is able to follow symlinks. This isn't related to PW. Check your .htaccess and vhost config  ( I always use symlinks to exclude cache/sessions/files/ ...)

[Ivan Gretsky]

@justb3a: It is very interesting! Could you please write a bit about the way you use symlinks in your installation and how it is integrated in your dev/deploy processes?

[rkraemer]

The idea behind is to simplify change between different versions.
Assume the following structure.

../processwire/ProcessWire-devns
                                /version
                                    /devns_3.0.7
                                    /devns_3.0.8 (assume that the apache rigths are set!)
                                                /wire
                                               /.. and the rest of pw      
                                /htdocs (here is the pw installation directory)
                
I create now a new symlink in htdocs to the used source dir like
=> ln -s /processwire/ProcessWire-devns/version/devns_3.0.8/ pw_src

and then the
=> ln -s pw_src/wire wire ( also for the rest al index.php )

The actual processwire installation should now updated to devns 3.0.8.

I can now easchange now easily change the pw version by reset the pw_src link to a new version.

This is my plan, but unfortunately does this not work in my configuration.

In the vhost conf, the required things are set from my point of view:

        AllowOverride All
        Order allow,deny
        Allow from all

        Require all granted
        DirectoryIndex index.php index.html index.htm
        Options +MultiViews
        Options -Indexes
        Options +FollowSymLinks +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
 

Has anybody an eye-opener tip?  

[flydev]

First thing, you are mixing Apache 2.2 and 2.4 directives.

Allow from all => 2.2
Require all granted 2.4

Also change Options -Indexes to +Indexes and look if you see the symlinks.

What is saying the server logs ?  Look like a persmission issue to me.

[justb3a]

@Ivan Gretsky: In most cases I use a little capistrano script to deploy my projects. There is a release folder which keeps the latest five (for example, configurable) releases. The latest release is a symlink to a folder named current. Furthermore there is a shared folder, which keeps environment specific stuff like configs, files, caches, logs. These folders and files are also symlinks. I don't have to create the symlinks manually, capistrano does this for me. 

ls -lah
current -> /var/www/project/releases/20160222114746
releases
shared

ls -lah current/pulic/site/assets
active.php
cache -> /var/www/project/shared/public/site/assets/cache
files -> /var/www/project/shared/public/site/assets/files
index.php
logs -> /var/www/project/shared/public/site/assets/logs
sessions -> /var/www/project/shared/public/site/assets/sessions

Pretty much all of my projects are running on a nginx server. So I can't help / compare with my .htaccess / vhosts config, because I don't use them