[stellation-res] help with php

[Dave Shields <shields@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Does anyone out there know php? I'm trying to put together a nightly build process, and it 
turns out eclipse.org uses php to manage downloads. 

If you try to download a file from eclipse.org, you will see it is done via a file named 'index.php'.
I was unable to get my browser to view the php source, so I need some help putting together a php file
we can use to manage Stellation downloads. I think we have to go the php route due to the way eclipse.org
is managed. As Mark explained it, whenever you view a page at eclipse.org, the source is actually checked
out via CVS and then displayed.

Any help would be appreciated, either in constructing usable php file from scratch, or by sorting
out just how eclipse does it, so we can copy that code.  I happened to be in New Haven yesterday, 
and was able to spend a few minutes scanning some php books at the Yale bookstore, 
but I would prefer not having to learn the language just now, since that would delay the alpha
release date.  (I have ordered a copy of Programming PHP by Lerdorf, et. al., in case 
I need to go this route.)

By the way, it turns out php supports SQL, so it should be possible in the long run to do some
very interesting things once we have Stellation up and running. For example, when you download a file,
why not keep track of the number of downloads, so it can be reported, list bug reports filed against
the file since it was made available, and so forth, all of which seems possible using SQL from php
to access repositories maintained by Stellation.

dave

-- 
Dave Shields, IBM Research, shields@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.