Setup - Let update-Command change configs

This page was created after the feature freeze for ILIAS 7. It attempts to solve an issue that became appearant when the current Web GUI was abandoned and will be brought up as development issue on the Jour Fixe 2020-10-12. Still, this is documented as a Feature Request to be easily included in release notes.

1 Initial Problem

Currently it is possible to change some configuration of an ILIAS installation via the Web GUI of the Setup only, the configuration is not accessible via other means. The update command on the CLI currently does not change the configuration of the installation. This is intentional, but unexpected for some users. With ILIAS 7 we want to [Setup - Abandon web based GUI|abandon the Web GUI] and replace it with the CLI interface to the setup completely. This, however, would result in a situation where it is not easily possible to change the configuration that currently is only accessible via the Web GUI of the Setup.

2 Conceptual Summary

The `update` command of the CLI setup is changed so that it uses the configuration supplied by the user. There will be configuration where this needs to be denied, because it is not as simple as changing some field in the ini or the database. The only configurations (currently known and implemented) where a change via update is impossible are the client-id and the path to the data dir. If a user attempts to change these, she will get a message that tells that the config cannot be changed in the intended way.

This also opens the possibility to make the config argument to the `update` command optional, so that users can signal their intent to not change anything and just update. Consequently, this should be implemented as well.

3 User Interface Modifications

3.1 List of Affected Views

• command line interface to the setup

3.2 User Interface Details

• The `config` argument to the `update` command will become optional.

3.3 New User Interface Concepts

• none

4 Technical Information

• The change is already implemented and not very big but affects all components (and hence maintainers). To keep this managable for the maintainers, I intend to create a common PR that implements the `status` command as well, so maintainers won't need to look over too many PRs. If everything goes on as intended, the PR should land at around 2020-10-15. Dear maintainers, please reserve some time to look into (and hopefully approve) the PR until coding completed. I will keep you posted!

5 Privacy Information

none

6 Security Implications

none

7 Contact

• Author of the Request: Richard Klees
• Maintainer: Richard Klees (Setup) and others (various components)
• Implementation of the feature is done by CaT ILIAS Team

8 Funding

If you are interest in funding this feature, please add your name and institution to this list.

• …

9 Discussion

2020-10-08, Klees, Richard [rklees]: I only recently realized that this is an issue. I considered to open a bug that reports the issue (or reopen the bug I linked above) or just put some development issue without an according page or on the "Abandon webbased GUI" page. Finally I came to the conclusion that these will be hard to find for users and won't be included very prominently in the release notes. So I hope the JF can also accept this as a Feature Page that was created to late.

JourFixe, ILIAS [jourfixe], 12 OCT 2020 : We highly appreciate this suggestion and schedule the feature for ILIAS 7.

10 Implementation

The changes have been implemented as described. The `update` command now can be run without any configuration and then just applies database updates if available. When provided with a config.json, the configuration of the installation is changed accordingly, if possible. If this is not possible, an according error message will be generated.

Test Cases

Test cases completed at 2020-10-29 by Klees, Richard [rklees]

• C31981 - Update einer bestehenden Installation
• C42279 - Änderung der Konfiguration einer bestehenden Installation

Approval

Approved at 2020-10-29 by Klees, Richard [rklees].