Trac on SDF

This tutorial discusses how to install Trac, in the words of its creators a minimalistic approach to web-based management of software projects.

Introduction
Installation
Running Trac
Further reading

Introduction

Trac includes wiki, bug tracker, milestone plan and an interface to Subversion. It is installed on SDF, so you can setup your own instance and manage your projects.

Installing a Trac instance on SDF

Setting up an SVN repository

Skip this step if you want to use Trac without a repository. Otherwise run the commands

$ mkdir .svn_repos $ svnadmin create .svn_repos/my-cool-project

to setup a repository named my-cool-project in your homedir under $HOME/.svn_repos. You can then checkout your repository from your home using the svn+ssh protocol.

Setting up Trac

Get started with

trac-admin /path/to/trac initenv

where /path/to/trac is the directory where Trac will be installed (it will be created if doesn't exist). The installation routine will ask you a bunch of questions, including your project's name, database connection (default is fine), repository type and path (type in the path you have chosen above, e.g. ~/.svn_repos/my-cool-project) or leave it blank if you didn't setup a repository. Whenever you are not sure what to do, just hit [return] to use the default.

If the output finally reads Project environment for 'My cool project' created and Congratulations!, you have just successfully installed Trac. Pat yourself on the back and read on!

Running Trac

There are currently two ways to run Trac on SDF: with the standalone server tracd and as CGI within Apache.

Using the standalone server `tracd`

This is by far the least painful, but requires the MetaARPA membership because tracd opens a port on the machine.

First, run the command

id -u

and note down the number that is printed on the terminal. This will be your port number (to avoid conflicts between users) and will be refered to as PORT from here on.

Next, run the command

tracd --port PORT /path/to/trac

You will now be able to connect to your Trac instance with your Browser of Choice™ at http://sverige.freeshell.org:PORT/trac

Running Trac as CGI within Apache

With this setup, you will be able to run Trac under your own domain. The tradeoff is performance – tracd is considerably faster.

Copy trac.cgi into your html/ directory:

cp /usr/pkg/share/trac/cgi-bin/trac.cgi html/

and fix the permissions using mkhomepg -p. Add the following lines to trac.cgi just after the comments:

import os os.environ['TRAC_ENV']='/path/to/trac'

Now Trac can locate the directory containing your instance.

If you rename the CGI to index.cgi, it can be called just by the directory. In that case, you may consider setting up a subdirectory (like MYPROJECT) and copying the CGI there.

Point your browser to http://YOURLOGIN.freeshell.org/trac.cgi (or even just YOURLOGIN.freeshell.org/MYPROJECT if you renamed the CGI and copied it to the MYPROJECT subdirectory of your html/) to check that it works. Please be patient, CGI takes a while to load the page.

Note: If you want to use Trac in your VHOSTed domain at SDF, be sure to put trac.cgi into the corresponding domain directory under html/.