XWIKI for Apple Users

[holsch]

Hello to the community, when I look trough the threads, I have the feeling, that not much people are using Xwiki on MAC OS?

As you might know, Apples own WIKI (included in Apple Server app) is discontinued since the Server release 5.7.1
Apple itself is stating, that among others Xwiki is an alternative WIKI. In general, Apple users like me are not the real geeks/nerds and therefore like it simple and easy.

Are there any plans to create a complete package for Apple MAC OS? like a .dmg?
I can imagine, that there are a lot of frustrated Apple users, that are looking for an alternative but winces of the quiet complex Xwiki installation.

Just a thought (to be honest not unselfish )

regards

Holger

[vmassol]

Hi, yes it would be nice to have a DMG but that’s not an easy thing since it would need to bundle a servlet container & a database in addition to XWiki. And it might need to bundle lots of other things such as a reverse proxy, a load balancer, a cluster, depending how you wish to use XWiki. There are 100 of different configurations for using XWiki depending on your needs.

So it would be possible to bundle a basic distribution with just Tomcat and MySQL for example.

But I think DMG is a bad choice and instead Homebrew would be better.

Now could it be that you’re now an administrator/sysadin or a technical guy and maybe you’re after a simple, not necessarily optimum solution that can handle a small number of users? Could you give us more info about the number of users you need to service? I’m asking because the the ZIP package might be almost good enough for you and all we’d need to do is offer a simple way to configure HSQLDB to not keep data in memory.

Thanks

[vmassol]

Now the docker image is IMO perfect for your need:

• Cannot be simpler to use
• Clean, doesn’t impact other things on the machine

[vmassol]

Could you explain why the docker image is a problem on mac?

[holsch]

yes, welcome. Will try to conclude it correctly.
when you compare Xwiki to Apple’s Wiki, you instantly notice, that xwiki has much more features and possibilities. Furthermore, as you already said, you are able to choose between multiple DB Engines and servlet containers a.s.o. I would say, that this freedom is not necessary for a “standard” Apple installation. when it comes to load balancing and clustering, you have to dig much more deeper in the matter anyway.
I did install the Docker on my Mac (Desktop) this was no big deal.
After that I started to type in the commands, that you did suggest via Github and in the end I got an Xwiki up and running Hurray…
After booting the System, the xwiki was not reachable anymore. I assume and need to study a bit more, that there is a start command in the Terminal “Docker start” that needs to be executed every time the machine boots. I also did wrote those newbie questions in another thread.

when you compare the Xwiki installation to a standard Installation on a Mac, where you only need to drag and drop a program into the program folder, it is much more hard to get done.

But I do understand, that from your perspective, you handle much complex things and probably start rolling eyes

regards and really appreciate your support

Take care

Holger

[vmassol]

After booting the System, the xwiki was not reachable anymore. I assume and need to study a bit more, that there is a start command in the Terminal “Docker start” that needs to be executed every time the machine boots. I also did wrote those newbie questions in another thread.

Note that you would have the same concern with any other distribution. It’s not related to Docker. You need to tell your system that you want your servlet container to start when the machine starts.

Regarding how to do this with Docker, it’s independent of XWiki. See for example https://docs.docker.com/config/containers/start-containers-automatically/

I’ll reply on the other thread too.

when you compare the Xwiki installation to a standard Installation on a Mac, where you only need to drag and drop a program into the program folder, it is much more hard to get done.

But I do understand, that from your perspective, you handle much complex things and probably start rolling eyes

I’d love it to be as simple But it’s not easy. We’re trying hard to make it as easy as possible but when you don’t control the environment (as apple does), it’s much harder (xwiki can run on lots of hardware and OSes).

The homebrew packaging would be very nice. Only issue is: who has the time to develop it ? XWiki has been downloaded millions of times across its 15 years of activity and you’re the first one I recall asking for an install on Mac (ok maybe the 2nd one). So it’s hard to justify spending a lot of time on this vs spending that time to improve XWiki, fixing bugs, etc. It would be nice if someone with knowledge about DMG or Homebrew could contribute an installer for XWiki. The XWiki dev team would be very willing to help out.

Back to your topic, one thing we’re working on, is to make the installation page simpler to use, and based on OS. So we could have better instructions for Mac to recommend one approach. See https://markmail.org/message/ojaq7q4ie2okhxo5 and https://design.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/download/Install/LDJEasierInstallationFlow/WebHome/Iteration1ZIP.png

Thanks for your feedback! Keep it coming.

[holsch]

Thanks a lot for your reply, one remark, when you look on the xwiki Website, you do not explicitly see compatibility with MACOS, So I would presume, that MAC users surf away and look for something where they do feel familiar with.
I think it would be good, on the website point to the fact, that docker is a common installation variant for MAC OS as well. (only found some information deeper in the documentation)

Maybe it is worth consideration to look at
https://documentation.mamp.info/en/MAMP-Mac/Installation/
Maybe the Xwiki is able to run in this environment? (think Media Wiki is using this platform)

regards

Holger

[vmassol]

I think it would be good, on the website point to the fact, that docker is a common installation variant for MAC OS as well. (only found some information deeper in the documentation)

If the user has no clue about Docker then they should not use docker for sure. You need to be familiar with it to use it. So the very minimal requirement is that you know that Docker exists on Mac

In short there’s no install of XWiki that you can do without understanding how it’s setup and you shouldn’t since you’ll need to maintain it. It’s a server install and for server software you need an admin/sysadmin for maintenance.

From the questions you ask, I think you’re trying to use a server software as if it was some software you install on your machine for your usage, such as MS word.

There’s a solution for this though: Hosted XWiki. This allows to delegate all admin tasks (setup/install, backups, monitoring, upgrades, support) to some experts who know how to run XWiki. See for example XWiki SAS’s XWiki Cloud offering: https://www.xwiki.com/en/products/try-xwiki-cloud

you do not explicitly see compatibility with MACOS

Yes, because XWiki works on all OSes (It’s java!) so we didn’t put it indeed

Requirements are here: https://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Documentation/AdminGuide/Installation/#HHardwareandSoftwarerequirements

And it says: “Java 1.8.0_101 or greater installed”.

Any OS which can have Java (that means all) can run XWiki!

Maybe it is worth consideration to look at
https://documentation.mamp.info/en/MAMP-Mac/Installation/
Maybe the Xwiki is able to run in this environment? (think Media Wiki is using this platform)

This seems to install a web server (supported but not needed for a simple XWiki installation) and MySQL. So yes if you configure XWiki to use that it’ll work. You’ll just need to configure the Apache server or Nginx to point to Tomcat (for ex) and configure XWiki’s hibernate config file to point to that MySQL instance.