server.conf documentation

[M-Pixel]

Where can I find documentation on the various XML tags in server.conf?

[calbzam]

Hi,

Well, the "server.conf" is not supposed to be manually edited for most of the tags. If you open the WebAdmin, most of them should be able to be edited via the graphical interface.

If you have any doubt regarding a specific one, please let us know?

Regards,

Carlos.

[M-Pixel]

Is there a command-line configuration utility?  I'm aiming for 100% scripted setup.  I suppose I could use whatever HTTP API that WebAdmin is using, but I doubt that's documented.

[María]

Hi!

Please check the following documentation https://www.plasticscm.com/documentation/administration/plastic-scm-version-control-administrator-guide#Chapter6:webadmin-Serverconfigurationandadministration. Maybe this helps!

Regards.

María

[M-Pixel]

That's not what I'm looking for, but I did eventually find it:

https://www.plasticscm.com/documentation/administration/plastic-scm-version-control-administrator-guide#Serverconfiguration
This section describes steps for using clconfigureserver .

https://www.plasticscm.com/documentation/administration/plastic-scm-version-control-administrator-guide#Authenticationconfiguration
This section describes steps for using umtool .

Unfortunately, some of these commands are interactive, making them unnecessarily difficult to script.

 

It looks like I'll have to just reverse-engineer the HTTP API, or else the XML and other files, and write my own tools for Configuring Plastic Server.

[calbzam]

Hello,

Could you let us know your specific needs? You just want to automatize the configuration of the Plastic server with some specific setting?

Regards,

Carlos. 

[M-Pixel]

That's the gist of it.

I need to be able to hire a subcontractor, send them a script, and say "run this - then you will have a complete development environment", so that I'm not paying people to waste time pushing GUI buttons.

I need to be able to start a new computer, or re-image an existing computer that needed reimaging for whatever reason, and click my "set up computer for business operations" program, instead of having to waste time pushing GUI buttons the same way every time.

I am going to eventually need to be able to set up continuous integration processes, and I suspect that not being able to change server settings automatically would make certain aspects of that unnecessarily difficult.

That doesn't require there to be command-line tools for modifying all the properties.  It's plenty easy to set values in XML, JSON, and INI files from a script.

 

I'm surprised this is being questioned at all.  Git, SVN, Mercurial, Perforce, Docker, and the list goes on, are all configurable entirely from a script.  Heck, most of the Windows operating system, which is gargantuan, is almost entirely configurable from PowerShell.  As I'm working to automate more and more of my business, I'm finding that even if the other programs don't have console programs for configuring, they at least have documentation on their config files.  Even programs without proper documentation at least have a full enumeration of properties in their config files (and a consistent schema across config files).  Plastic has an odd mix of key-space-value, key-colon-value, key-equals-value, XML, etc, almost none of it is documented, a small subset of it is covered by the included "example configs", and only some of it is configurable without a human actively waving a mouse around.

I did just figure out that `clconfigureserver` can be used non-interactively, when I came across an example in a forum post.  Too bad that feature isn't documented.

 

Here's another way of looking at it.  Why are they text files?  If they're not supposed to be modified by the user, then why not use binary serialization?  You have probably needed to modify the files by hand yourself from time to time.  Your users need to just as much (I find myself having to do that every month or two to work around issues or lack of features).  But we lack the information to do so accurately, without having to reverse-engineer the puzzle that you created.

 

The original intent of this post was to find out where the documentation is, since I didn't find it easily by myself.  Since it's been clarified in this discussion that the documentation does not exist at all, I've gone ahead and created a request on Uservoice.

[calbzam]

As you mentioned, for your specific scenario, you can use "clconfigureserver --help" or you can manually edit the confoiguration files. I wanted to know the details of your needs because this is not a common request. For every Plastic command, the best docuemntation is included in the "--help" flag. it includes all the available paramters and some examples.

Not only for the server confiuration, but in general for every Plastic command.

Our customers tend to prefer to configure the server via webadmin fine tunning all the parameters, setting the authentication mode, creating the custom users...

Then, if you need to apply the same configuration on a different machine, you can just distribute all the configuration files to the secondary servers. It's not necessary to reconfigure it from scratch.

Regards,

Carlos.

[M-Pixel]

Is there a full list of all relevant configuration files to copy from server to server, anywhere in your official documentation?

[calbzam]

In the following link we explain how to move a Plastic server to a different machine. We include a brief explanation of every configuration file

https://plasticscmsupport.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360008263854-How-to-move-the-Plastic-SCM-server-to-a-new-machine

Hope it helps!

Carlos.

[M-Pixel]

Thanks.  I didn't realize that there's additional documentation on Zendesk (it's not linked to from the Doc or Support pages).