[Asterisk-bsd] FreePBX on FreeBSD

[Doug Barton]

While I certainly don't want to involve the members of this list in a
"he said, she said" type of situation, I think it's extremely
unfortunate that Roger chose to phrase his message below in the way he
did. I have no plans to engage in a dialog on this topic but I would
like to briefly state some facts in the hopes that it benefits anyone
else who chooses to work on the project.

1. I was hired to produce a FreeBSD port of the FreePBX software.
2. After a brief initial attempt I informed Roger that the sources don't
lend themselves to porting, that doing so would require a substantial
amount of additional work, and suggested that he consider other
alternatives.
3. After a period of time Roger replied saying that he wanted me to
resume work on the port.
4. I worked this additional project in amongst my other commitments,
however eventually it became obvious to me that porting the software was
not likely to be successful.
5. As a result of my failure to produce the desired result I chose not
to bill Roger for an extensive portion of the hours I spent working on
the project.

I pride myself in my professionalism, and don't like disappointing
clients. I wish this situation had ended happily for all concerned, but
I'm glad to do what I can to help if someone else wants to work on this.

Meanwhile, I remain convinced that this software isn't suitable for a
FreeBSD port. Obviously it is possible to get a specific version
installed and configured on FreeBSD, but from my extensive work with the
sources it's clear to me that the whole system is designed from the
ground up to run in the environment that they have created. (Note,
that's not just "linux," it's the whole FreePBX-specific linux distro
that they've designed and distribute.) Even if it is installed
successfully I am highly dubious that their upgrade process would work
as they designed it to.

When I chose to terminate work on the project I was considering 2
alternative approaches. The first was to continue with the port that I
had, skip the "upgrade" part of install_amp altogether, and produce a
mysql script that made sure that the relevant databases had the right
fields, tables, etc.

The other looked more or less like this:

1. Install the linux distro.
2. Extract the relevant files
3. Patch them with FreeBSD-appropriate paths, etc.
4. Create a tarball with the patched sources and create a FreeBSD port
to install them (along with the mysql component described above).

I think either would work for any given version of FreePBX, but they
both have the significant downside of being difficult to maintain when
they release an update.


I hope this is useful,

Doug


On 10/18/2011 20:46, Roger Marquis wrote:
>> On Wed, Sep 21, 2011 at 11:59:50PM -0700, Doug Barton wrote:
>>> My approach so far has been massive amounts of sed to try and get the
>>> paths in the various scripts to match what FreeBSD ports usually do.
>>
>> Offhand, I'd think this is the wrong approach to try.
>> See my comments below about a different way to fix the code.
> 
> Doug has given up on porting FreePBX to FreeBSD but, $1,500 and 3 months
> later, we do have a nearly complete port.  Would appreciate it (and pay
> for it) if anyone on this list could finish it or perhaps just install
> FreePBX on our test server.  The current effort can be downloaded by
> either cvs:
> 
>  setenv CVSROOT :pserver:anonymous at apps.roble.com:/ports/www
>  cvs login
>  cvs co freepbx
> 
> or http:
> 
>  http://apps.roble.com/src/freepbx_20111018.tgz
> 
> It apparently runs to the point of installing the files then starts on
> the "upgrade" directories, however, most of the upgrade scripts fail
> (though they do run from the command line).  Something about the way they
> are called by install_amp makes them fail. (per Doug)
> 
> I think par of the problem may be the attempt to do things the "FreeBSD
> way" i.e., installing everything under /usr/local instead of installing
> in /usr/local/freepbx and creating a few symlinks in /usr/local/bin.
> 
> Please let me know if you are interested in finishing this port and if
> you need a server to test on.
> 
> Roger Marquis