I've been reading a few blog postings and forum pages about how people are finding it difficult to install Trac and Subversion on Windows. Well having moved over to a new Job at a New Company, I was tasked with installing it on one of their machines. Well I didn't want to look an idiot and install it straight on a machine and make it come tumbling down, having been a while since I installed it.So I have VMWARE Fusion installed on my work MAC and I had an image of Windows XP, So i went ahead and install it to refresh my mind, before starting this I made a back up of the Virtual Image, I installed everything as required and it was running fine, then I realised I didn't really structure the install to well, so on the clean XP Machine I installed it all nicely in Folders on the D Drive and with Applications, separate form data and then the data separated out (Folder for the SVN Repository, Trac Repository and a Configuration Folder for config files).
So being happy that I have now installed it twice I was going to give it ago on the machine it was all meant for. but I noticed it had IIS running and a few other bits and knew about the Apache and IIS IP Issue so in the Windows XP Virtual Machine I installed VMWARE Converter converted the live machine to a VM to run in VMFusion. I then found a few caveats that I didn't find on the clean machines due to other software being installed but this was mainly down to the IIS and APACHE IP Conflict.
So I've installed Apache, Subversion and Trac Three times at this point, and no longer need to follow my own doc (I will do a dedicated posting soon). I installed Apache 2.0.61 / SVN 1.4.5 / Trac 0.11dev Latest.
I tried to install with Apache 2.2.6 But couldn't get it to work, first off and as I was under a bit of a time constraint I went back to 2.0.61 and since have got it all installed with Apache 2.2.6 on my home machine.
I've also installed a number of plug-ins and macros that I think really do enhance the features of trac, maybe my next job should be to learn how to create my own plug-ins :D. So the List of plugins I have installed:
batchmodify 0.2.0
Allows batch modification of tickets
Author: ashwinpphatak@gmail.com
Home page: http://trac-hacks.org/wiki/BatchModifyPlugin
License: BSD
flexibleassignto 0.6
A Trac extension point for customizing the Assign To ticket field.
Author: gt4329b@pobox.com
Home page: UNKNOWN
License: BSD
iniadmin 0.2
Expose all TracIni options using the Trac config option API
Author: UNKNOWN
Home page: http://trac-hacks.org/wiki/IniAdminPlugin
License: BSD
timingandestimationplugin 0.5.7
Plugin to make Trac support time estimation and tracking
Author: russ@acceleration.net
Home page: http://www.trac-hacks.org/wiki/TimingAndEstimationPlugin
License: http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php
tracaccountmanager 0.2dev-r2547
User account management plugin for Trac
Author: trac@matt-good.net
Home page: http://trac-hacks.org/wiki/AccountManagerPlugin
tracaddcommentmacro 0.3
Macro to add comments to a wiki page.
Author: UNKNOWN
Home page: http://trac-hacks.org/wiki/AddCommentMacro
License: BSD
traccustomfieldadmin 0.2
Admin panel for managing Trac ticket custom fields.
Author: UNKNOWN
Home page: http://trac-hacks.org/wiki/CustomFieldAdminPlugin
License: BSD
traccustomroadmap 0.4
Plugin to provide a configurable roadmap in Trac.
Author: djc@object-craft.com.au
Home page: http://www.object-craft.com.au/~djc
License: BSD
tracdatefield 1.0.1
Add custom date fields to Trac tickets.
Author: coderanger@yahoo.com
Home page: http://trac-hacks.org/wiki/DateFieldPlugin
License: BSD
tracmacropost 0.2
Allow wiki macros to use POSTs
Author: coderanger@yahoo.com
Home page: http://trac-hacks.org/wiki/MacroPostPlugin
License: BSD
tracmastertickets 2.1.1
Provides support for ticket dependencies and master tickets.
Author: coderanger@yahoo.com
Home page: http://trac-hacks.org/wiki/MasterTicketsPlugin
License: BSD
tracrevtreeplugin 0.5.11dev-r2832
Revision Graph for the Version Control Browser
Author: emmanuel.blot@free.fr
Home page: http://trac-hacks.org/wiki/RevtreePlugin
License: BSD
tractocmacro 11.0.0.2
A macro to create tables of contents.
Author: cboosr@neuf.fr
Home page: http://trac-hacks.org/wiki/TocMacro
License: BSD
tracwikigoodies 0.11.0.3dev
Plugin for Trac which extends the Wiki with some goodies
Author: cboos@neuf.fr
Home page: http://trac-hacks.org/wiki/WikiGoodiesPlugin
License: BSD
tracwysiwyg 0.2-r2829
TracWiki WYSIWYG Editor
Author: omae@opengroove.com
Home page: http://trac-hacks.org/wiki/TracWysiwygPlugin
License: BSD
tracxmlrpc 1.0.0
XML-RPC interface to Trac
Author: alec@swapoff.org
Home page: http://trac-hacks.org/wiki/XmlRpcPlugin
License: BSD
worklog 0.1
Plugin to manage the which tickets users are currently working on
Author: trac@colin.guthr.ie
Home page: UNKNOWN
License: http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php
Over the next few weeks I hope to give an example on how each of these plugins work. I have also installed the trueHTTPLogout patch as well as a SVN Post-Commit hook to update tickets. Again I will cover these over the next few weeks. I will be doing all of this on the Windows platform (As I don't have a great knowledge of the Linux Platform at the moment)
XMLRPC Plugin - make sure you install the trunk version and not the release version. Otherwise it won't work properly in trac or with Mylyn. (http://snipurl.com/trac011mylyn)
Actually the comment about Apache being more powerful and more secure than IIS was once true many years ago, but is no longer the case, nor has it been for a long time. You should do some research before making such a statement otherwise you are no different than the people who say "ColdFusion is dead".
Well, seeing I have to use IIS in my production environment I find it very annoying that I have to buy all these add-ons to do the things that Apache does out the box.
Also when my developers are working on their local machines (Win XP Pro) They can only run one website at a time, and have to use some SPECIAL software to run more then one website on the machine without having to reset it all the time. (As we are on Windows 2003 in production we can't upgrade to Vista else we may get issues with deployments / unlike with Apache that wouldn't be been an Issue)
Also by using Apache you are platform agnostic, there is nothing that IIS does that Apache doesn't but there are certainly a lot of things that IIS doesn't do that I can in Apache and thus makes Apache a much more powerful option.
The fact that there are point release with Apache with Security / performance fixes again shows they care and also will work on any version (in this case to be fair of recent windows editions). Where as with IIS you tend to be stuck with the current version until you BUY the next buggy release of Windows.
Open Source Software gives you more control sometimes then closed software. But sometimes and certainly in the case of ColdFusion closed software can be more powerful. It all depends on the eye of the beer holder ;)
With the fact that ColdFusion also runs on multiple platforms as does Apache means you really can use the best of bread to create the platform you need.
@Snake If you do your research correctly you will see that:
"VisualSVN is a Visual Studio plugin for Subversion integration. VisualSVN adds transparent and professional source control to the most widely used IDE on the Windows platform." that costs money per seat.
And if you meant the server:
"VisualSVN Server is a package that contains everything you need to install, configure and manage Subversion server for your team on Windows platform. It includes Subversion, Apache and a management console." Which is free.
Doesn't seem to mention IIS there or anywhere on the site.
Thanks for your insight Alan, I was of course not talking about the Visual Studio plugin, that has nothing to do with this topic. I was referring to the VisualSVN server, which I do in fact use myself, thus my post.
Kevin, your comments about developing with IIS are certainly true, it is a pain only having 1 site with XP. These limitation does not exist with Vista/IIS7, so they got something right there, sadly I would not encourage anyone to install Vista though. But whichever way you go it is always best to develop on the same system you will be deploying on. But that was not the point in case, the point was that Apache is not more powerful or more secure than IIS.
FYI, most of the IIS plugins we use are free too, just like their Apache equivalents, and those that aren't come with support and regular updates, which can often be better than waiting for the open source community to fix something, as you can hardly moan at someone to fix something when you haven't even paid for it. But that is simply a matter a preference and often a commercial decision for most people, like choosing PHP over CF. I have nothing against Apache, I simply choose to use IIS and my company choose to run windows/IIS servers.
Relating toyour post on VisualSVN as Alan rightly points out it uses Apache under the engine, I have looked at he site and find no reference to it being used with IIS which is what your point was after all and thus Alan was right to highlight this.
As for the IIS / Apache you may well be right. But with the fact you have said and agreed with the limitation of IIS on windows XP and also identified that you don't encourage anyone to develop on Vista (Which doesn't have the limitation)
I will leave this here, as I stand by the fact that Apache is much more Flexible and Powerful even for the reason of Multi Platform and Multiple Sites in both Dev and Production environments.
XMLRPC Plugin - make sure you install the trunk version and not the release version. Otherwise it won't work properly in trac or with Mylyn. (http://snipurl.com/trac011mylyn)