Summary:
See discussion in T2221. Before we can move configuration to the database, we have a bootstrapping problem: we need database credentials to live //somewhere// if we can't guess them (and we can only really guess localhost / root / no password).
Some options for this are:
- Have them live in ENV variables.
- These are often somewhat unfamiliar to users.
- Scripts would become a huge pain -- you'd have to dump a bunch of stuff into ENV.
- Some environments have limited ability to set ENV vars.
- SSH is also a pain.
- Have them live in a normal config file.
- This probably isn't really too awful, but:
- Since we deploy/upgrade with git, we can't currently let them edit a file which already exists, or their working copy will become dirty.
- So they have to copy or create a file, then edit it.
- The biggest issue I have with this is that it will be difficult to give specific, easily-followed directions from Setup. The instructions need to be like "Copy template.conf.php to real.conf.php, then edit these keys: x, y, z". This isn't as easy to follow as "run script Y".
- Have them live in an abnormal config file with script access (this diff).
- I think this is a little better than a normal config file, because we can tell users 'run phabricator/bin/config set mysql.user phabricator' and such, which is easier to follow than editing a config file.
I think this is only a marginal improvement over a normal config file and am open to arguments against this approach, but I think it will be a little easier for users to deal with than a normal config file. In most cases they should only need to store three values in this file -- db user/host/pass -- since once we have those we can bootstrap everything else. Normal config files also aren't going away for more advanced users, we're just offering a simple alternative for most users.
This also adds an ENVIRONMENT file as an alternative to PHABRICATOR_ENV. This is just a simple way to specify the environment if you don't have convenient access to env vars.
Test Plan: Ran `config set x y`, verified writes. Wrote to ENVIRONMENT, ran `PHABRICATOR_ENV= ./bin/repository`.
Reviewers: btrahan, vrana, codeblock
Reviewed By: codeblock
CC: aran
Maniphest Tasks: T2221
Differential Revision: https://secure.phabricator.com/D4294
