0

My research and development environment calls for a heavily customised TRAC with a corresponding subversion repository and a binary file store (e.g. WebDAV).

I have my eye on at least 10 plugins that I would like to use (from integration with time tracking software, to specialist mathematics/code rendering). I'd also like to write my own plugins.

I am looking for a commercial host that will allow me to self-manage my TRAC plugins. I've looked into (and contacted) a few of the commercial providers from the TRAC Commercial Services list, including:

Project Locker have described that they do a code review of plugin requests and handle it on their end (unspecified time period). Repository Hosting have said that they "will probably not add support for that in the near future". SVN Repository have said "you won't be able to install any new plugins" and have suggested one of their VPS accounts instead.

Short of managing my own VPS or dedicated server, does anybody know of a commercial SVN/TRAC host who allows paying customers to install their own plugins? I would have thought a chroot environment would have made this a no-brainer!

(Note: this was originally posted on programmers but was down-voted and I was advised to move it here. Quoting from their FAQ: implementation issues or programming tools (ask on Stack Overflow instead))

fommil
  • 5,757
  • 8
  • 41
  • 81
  • 1
    Hm, I would rather have expected such a question at serverfault.com than here, because it's more related to administration and setup than to programming, anyway. – hasienda Aug 06 '12 at 17:35
  • @hasienda I'm not so sure about that because that is about the administration, but my question is essentially about the outsourcing of the administration. – fommil Aug 07 '12 at 12:22
  • 1
    I would think that running a profitable Trac hosting service and allowing end users to manage plugins is mutually exclusive. Just look at the vast # of plugins at trac-hacks.org and imagine the support nightmare (from the hosting company's perspective) when this or that plugin requires some special privileges. I know you mentioned "short of VPS" but I would like to comment that I needed a similar flexible Trac hosted installation and I found setting up a Linux Trac VPS to be straightforward - and I am a Windows guy. – Craig A Aug 08 '12 at 20:20

1 Answers1

2

You'll probably find a hard time finding what you're looking for because as Craig mentioned in his comment, the concept of commercial hosting services typically revolves around limiting a customer's ability to customize. Keeping things relatively uniform means that the hosting company can manage systems and deploy automated updates much more easily and won't have to worry about their scripts breaking because of something odd that one customer installed or re-configured.

If you want to be able to install and configure plugins at will, I highly recommend going the VPS route and managing the server yourself. It's easier than you might expect (I was thrown into this situation and was pleasantly surprised). You can start with something like the Bitnami Trac stack, which is a virtual machine image that has a Linux OS plus Trac and all of the support tools (database, webserver, etc) set up and ready to go. If you use that as a starting point, all you should have to do is customize your Trac settings and install your plugins.

If you really don't want to have anything to do with the management aspect, remember that you can always go the VPS route and contract out the administration work separately. It might be easier if the hosting provider and the system admin come from the same company, but it's not a requirement. Given the flexibility and customization that you need, this might be a more realistic option.

bta
  • 43,959
  • 6
  • 69
  • 99
  • +1 This isn't technically an answer to my question, but it has really given me food for thought. I am looking into Bitnami and setting up AWS. If I end up going with this, I'll mark you as the solution. – fommil Aug 12 '12 at 12:58