padarom/thunderstorm

A standalone WCF Package Update Server

Thunderstorm

Thunderstorm is a simple package update server for the WoltLab Community Framework written in PHP. It provides full compability with WCFs package system (*)., _(*1)

As I no longer use WCF I cannot put any more resources into this project until there is more interest in it or my schedule clears up. Contributions are much appreciated! Although not currently in development, Thunderstorm can be considered ready for use in production environments., _(*2)

Roadmap

• [x] HTML based frontend
• [ ] Authentication
• [ ] Administration interface
• [ ] Ability to edit plugins from the system

Server Requirements

This server is based on Laravel Lumen, and as such shares the same requirements. - PHP >= 5.5.9 - OpenSSL PHP Extension - PDO PHP Extension - Mbstring PHP Extension, _(*3)

You will also need to make sure that the php ini directive short_open_tag is set to Off., _(*4)

Installation

You can manually install this server by downloading the source code and running composer install to install all dependencies. After this you will need to complete the following steps:, _(*5)

1. Create a sqlite database file (database/database.sqlite)
2. Copy the example environment file (cp .env.example .env)
3. Run the database migrations (php artisan migrate)
4. Make sure your storage and uploads directory are writeable (chmod -R 755 storage/ uploads/)

I also provide a pre-packaged version (about 2MB) of all releases that already contains the dependencies. You still need to make sure the proper permissions are set for your storage and uploads directory (see step 4)., _(*6)

Upgrade Process

To upgrade to a newer version, do the following:, _(*7)

1. Backup these files/directories:
   • .env
   • database/database.sqlite
   • storage/packages
2. Replace the application with the newest version (unzip the prepackaged release or download the repository)
3. Move your backed up files back into the application (overwrite any existing files)
4. Run php artisan migrate

Setting up the import

The server scans the uploads/ directory (this can be configured in the .env configuration file) for new packages. So if you want to add new packages to the system, drop them in there. The server will automatically analyze its package.xml file and move it to the right directory. This import can be run manually with php artisan import:uploads when in the project root directory., _(*8)

Alternatively there's two ways to run the import automatically:, _(*9)

Cronjob (recommended)

The server checks for uploads every minute. To enable this, you must add a cronjob by running crontab -e (depending on your OS) and appending the following line (make sure to adjust the path):, _(*10)

* * * * * php /path/to/artisan schedule:run >> /dev/null 2>&1

On requests (not recommended)

The server runs the import automatically before answering the request. This runs (statistically) during 3 out of every 10 requests. Depending on the number of packages that have to be imported, this could severely slow down your application. During tests it was fast enough that it shouldn't make a noticeable difference, but it's still a good practice to run the import using cronjobs., _(*11)

If you have no way of running cronjobs and are absolutely sure you want to use this method for imports, then edit your .env configuration file and set the IMPORT_ONREQUESTS variable to true:, _(*12)

IMPORT_ONREQUESTS=true

(*) Incompatibilities

• Even though WCF supports .tar.gz archives (that is "gzipped tar archives"), it does not recommend using them. .tar archives are the preferred variant for WCF packages and as such, Thunderstorm does not support .tar.gz archives.

License

This is open-sourced software licensed under the MIT license., _(*13)