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Share the Wisdom: What's better? Hosting trac on Windows or Linux?

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jwanello at gmail

Aug 14, 2012, 12:58 PM

Post #1 of 12 (379 views)
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Share the Wisdom: What's better? Hosting trac on Windows or Linux?

Hello Everyone,

I'm hoping to pick your collective brain before I embark on this journey
and make all sorts of bad choices.

I'm looking to set up a project tracking environment for a group of people
who's primary desktop environment is Windows, but who are doing development
under both WIndows and Linux systems. (To clarify, not a alot of
cross-platform development going on here -- Windows based development is
for Windows envrironments and Linux-based development is for Linux
environments.) There's C(xx), Python, Perl, Java, and even MS Visual Studio
work happening here.

I'm thinking about rolling out somethng like Trac with SVN to handle
revision control (and whatever database engine is the best way to go). I
figure I'll also want Doxygen to plug in to this so we can take advantage
of what it brings to the table.

I'll probably want some kind of user-based access controls, but I'm not
worried about having single login (although it would be very nice,
especially from the WIndows side of things). We're not running a domain
(AD, LDAP, et al).

My question? Well, should I host this server on a Windows box or a Linux
box? Is one going to be more seamless for my users? Is one going to be more
seamless (and more stable) for me to get going? Which flavor of OS is more
likely to work (on the Windows side - Windows Server (03, 08) vs a desktop
Windows (XP, 7) [no Vista!]; on the Linux side - CentOS (5, 6), Fedora,
Ubuntu)?

Or, is Trac the wrong tool? Is Redmine or something else better?

So here is your chance -- someone is actually **asking** for your opinion!

I'll be very grateful for any guidance now (before I give Charon my coin).

Thanks in advance for yor thoughtful replies.

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Matt.Caron at redlion

Aug 14, 2012, 1:22 PM

Post #2 of 12 (369 views)
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Re: Share the Wisdom: What's better? Hosting trac on Windows or Linux? [In reply to]

On 08/14/2012 03:58 PM, ChiefEngr wrote:

> My question? Well, should I host this server on a Windows box or a
> Linux box?

My default choice is Trac + Git on Linux.

1. On revision control:

However, given the love Windows users have for GUIs and IDEs, you might
want to take a long look at Mercurial (hg), which is what my wife uses
at her shop (predominantly Windows-based development using C# and Java,
with Linux server backends). It integrates more nicely with things and
doesn't scare the n00bs.

I wouldn't set up new projects with SVN. Once you really get used to
using a DVCS, you'll wonder how you got by without it.

One caveat - if you're going to be doing a lot of FLOSS, git may be
preferable to hg, because it has greater market penetration into that
sector. Since my job is mainly Linux-based FLOSS, and most of us are on
Linux (or the first thing we do on Windows is install Cygwin) we use git
here.

2. On servers:

I've been quite fond of Ubuntu LTS server for the past 5 years or so.
apt is fast, all the breaking of things Canonical has done has been on
the workstation side (Unity, blech!), and it's got a 5 year support
cycle for LTS. Debian is another solid choice. I tend to not like
rpm-based distros because they take so long to query their DBs when
installing packages (I literally can start a query, ssh into a debian
machine, run that query, get my result, log off, and the RPM query will
still be running).

Also compelling is the automatic updating of pretty much everything.
Basically, there are two buckets - things you install manually and
things that come from repositories. The former, you have to keep updated
yourself. The latter get updated automatically, as part of the OS. I
find that, with Windows, the former list is rather large, and they may
or may not implement their own update mechanism. As such, the
maintenance overhead under Linux ends up being much less for me, because
I don't need to manually install updates for everything. I just
periodically log in to the server and check for updates, then install
whatever it finds. Heck, you can even configure it to automatically
silently install all critical updates.

So, for a normal Trac installation, the only things I find myself having
to update manually are the Trac install (because we've modified the
source) and plugins.

--
Matthew Caron, Software Build Engineer
Sixnet, a Red Lion business | www.sixnet.com
+1 (518) 877-5173 x138 office

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dmaziuk at bmrb

Aug 14, 2012, 1:50 PM

Post #3 of 12 (365 views)
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Re: Share the Wisdom: What's better? Hosting trac on Windows or Linux? [In reply to]

On 08/14/2012 02:58 PM, ChiefEngr wrote:
> Hello Everyone,
...
> My question? Well, should I host this server on a Windows box or a Linux
> box? Is one going to be more seamless for my users? Is one going to be more
> seamless (and more stable) for me to get going? Which flavor of OS is more
> likely to work (on the Windows side - Windows Server (03, 08) vs a desktop
> Windows (XP, 7) [no Vista!]; on the Linux side - CentOS (5, 6), Fedora,
> Ubuntu)?

The best OS is the one you (or whoever ends up maintaining the server)
know best.

--
Dimitri Maziuk
Programmer/sysadmin
BioMagResBank, UW-Madison -- http://www.bmrb.wisc.edu

Attachments:

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frankly3d at gmail

Aug 14, 2012, 1:55 PM

Post #4 of 12 (364 views)
Permalink

Re: Share the Wisdom: What's better? Hosting trac on Windows or Linux? [In reply to]

On 14/08/12 21:50, Dimitri Maziuk wrote:
> On 08/14/2012 02:58 PM, ChiefEngr wrote:
>> Hello Everyone,
> ...
>> My question? Well, should I host this server on a Windows box or a Linux
>> box? Is one going to be more seamless for my users? Is one going to be more
>> seamless (and more stable) for me to get going? Which flavor of OS is more
>> likely to work (on the Windows side - Windows Server (03, 08) vs a desktop
>> Windows (XP, 7) [no Vista!]; on the Linux side - CentOS (5, 6), Fedora,
>> Ubuntu)?
>
> The best OS is the one you (or whoever ends up maintaining the server)
> know best.
>

+1

--
Regards,
Frank
"Jack of all, fubars"

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olemis at gmail

Aug 14, 2012, 2:08 PM

Post #5 of 12 (373 views)
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Re: Share the Wisdom: What's better? Hosting trac on Windows or Linux? [In reply to]

On 8/14/12, ChiefEngr <jwanello [at] gmail> wrote:
> Hello Everyone,
>

:)

> I'm hoping to pick your collective brain before I embark on this journey
> and make all sorts of bad choices.
> I'm looking to set up a project tracking environment for a group of people
> who's primary desktop environment is Windows, but who are doing development
>
> under both WIndows and Linux systems. (To clarify, not a alot of
> cross-platform development going on here -- Windows based development is
> for Windows envrironments and Linux-based development is for Linux
> environments.) There's C(xx), Python, Perl, Java, and even MS Visual Studio
> work happening here.
>

I used to manage one such scenario where many Windows and GNU/Linux
PCs (... including VMs ...) were deployed .

- I do not recommend using IIS on Windows ... it's a real PITA .
- httpd on Windows works , but I've always achieved poor
performance as compared with ...
- httpd on GNU/Linux has delivered good performance to me.
I've always used Debian on all my servers
- ... but you can run it in many other scenarios and it will work

> I'm thinking about rolling out somethng like Trac with SVN to handle
> revision control

well , if you ask me I prefer DVCS , especially Mercurial because it's
very similar to svn, has simple concise set of commands , and is
powered by Python , which makes it really multi-platform and easy to
be migrated from one place (platform) to the other .

but svn is just fine if that's what you like .

> (and whatever database engine is the best way to go).

SQL Server * is out of the equation if you want to use Trac .
PostgreSQL and MySQL are good choices for big projects .

> I
> figure I'll also want Doxygen to plug in to this so we can take advantage
> of what it brings to the table.
>

There's a plugin @ t.h.o afaicr

> I'll probably want some kind of user-based access controls, but I'm not
> worried about having single login (although it would be very nice,
> especially from the WIndows side of things). We're not running a domain
> (AD, LDAP, et al).
>

there are a lot of integrations possible . Once upon a time I even
managed to setup an SSO based on OpenId powered by a central OpenId
server running gracie connected to MS AD for user login via PAM ...
all that flexible will be available ootb in GNU/Linux afaik .

> My question? Well, should I host this server on a Windows box or a Linux
> box?

I prefer GNU/Linux

> Is one going to be more seamless for my users?

Users should not notice the difference , except maybe server
performance , if this happens ...

> Is one going to be more
> seamless (and more stable) for me to get going? Which flavor of OS is more
> likely to work (on the Windows side - Windows Server (03, 08) vs a desktop
> Windows (XP, 7) [no Vista!]; on the Linux side - CentOS (5, 6), Fedora,
> Ubuntu)?
>

On Windows , I've always preferred Windows Server 2003 with Apache httpd

> Or, is Trac the wrong tool? Is Redmine or something else better?
>

<joke>
if you use Redmine or anything else you'll be removed from this list right away
</joke>

That's something you need to decide and depends on what you actually
want to do ... and your favorite flavor .

--
Regards,

Olemis.

Blog ES: http://simelo-es.blogspot.com/
Blog EN: http://simelo-en.blogspot.com/

Featured article:

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olemis at gmail

Aug 14, 2012, 2:23 PM

Post #6 of 12 (360 views)
Permalink

Re: Share the Wisdom: What's better? Hosting trac on Windows or Linux? [In reply to]

On 8/14/12, Matthew Caron <Matt.Caron [at] redlion> wrote:
> On 08/14/2012 03:58 PM, ChiefEngr wrote:
>
>> My question? Well, should I host this server on a Windows box or a
>> Linux box?
>
> My default choice is Trac + Git on Linux.
>
> 1. On revision control:
>
> However, given the love Windows users have for GUIs and IDEs, you might
> want to take a long look at Mercurial (hg), which is what my wife uses
> at her shop (predominantly Windows-based development using C# and Java,
> with Linux server backends). It integrates more nicely with things and
> doesn't scare the n00bs.
>

+1

> I wouldn't set up new projects with SVN. Once you really get used to
> using a DVCS, you'll wonder how you got by without it.
>

I second that ... but it's up to the original poster to decide

> One caveat - if you're going to be doing a lot of FLOSS, git may be
> preferable to hg, because it has greater market penetration into that
> sector. Since my job is mainly Linux-based FLOSS, and most of us are on
> Linux (or the first thing we do on Windows is install Cygwin) we use git
> here.
>

you could always access your Git repos with Mercurial , and you won't
need millions of aliases between the lines of all volumes in your
complete Harry Potter collection
;)

> 2. On servers:
>
> I've been quite fond of Ubuntu LTS server for the past 5 years or so.
> apt is fast, all the breaking of things Canonical has done has been on
> the workstation side (Unity, blech!), and it's got a 5 year support
> cycle for LTS. Debian is another solid choice.

+1

> I tend to not like
> rpm-based distros because they take so long to query their DBs when
> installing packages (I literally can start a query, ssh into a debian
> machine, run that query, get my result, log off, and the RPM query will
> still be running).
>

+1 ... apt is a pleasure . besides there are tools to create deb
install packages for Python apps and you'll be able to use them in
order to manage installations via your package management system .
Even if you pull plugin code from t.h.o. svn , you'll always know why
a file is hanging out somewhere in your file system . That's a higher
state of mind Windows admins don't actually enjoy
;)

> Also compelling is the automatic updating of pretty much everything.
> Basically, there are two buckets - things you install manually and
> things that come from repositories. The former, you have to keep updated
> yourself. The latter get updated automatically, as part of the OS. I
> find that, with Windows, the former list is rather large, and they may
> or may not implement their own update mechanism. As such, the
> maintenance overhead under Linux ends up being much less for me, because
> I don't need to manually install updates for everything. I just
> periodically log in to the server and check for updates, then install
> whatever it finds. Heck, you can even configure it to automatically
> silently install all critical updates.
>

+1

> So, for a normal Trac installation, the only things I find myself having
> to update manually are the Trac install (because we've modified the
> source) and plugins.
>

jfyi , the later may be automated with cron , svn , stdeb (or alike) ,
apt , and such tools ... and everything is managed by debian package
manager like I mentioned before
;)

--
Regards,

Olemis.

Blog ES: http://simelo-es.blogspot.com/
Blog EN: http://simelo-en.blogspot.com/

Featured article:

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ryano at physiosonics

Aug 14, 2012, 3:13 PM

Post #7 of 12 (363 views)
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Re: Share the Wisdom: What's better? Hosting trac on Windows or Linux? [In reply to]

On Tuesday, August 14, 2012 3:58:21 PM UTC-4, ChiefEngr wrote:
>
> My question? Well, should I host this server on a Windows box or a Linux
> box? Is one going to be more seamless for my users? Is one going to be more
> seamless (and more stable) for me to get going? Which flavor of OS is more
> likely to work (on the Windows side - Windows Server (03, 08) vs a desktop
> Windows (XP, 7) [no Vista!]; on the Linux side - CentOS (5, 6), Fedora,
> Ubuntu)?
>

I agree with Dimitri's comment. I will add, however, that if you are
looking at running a build server at some point, it may influence your
decision. You can certainly run separate Trac/SVN and build servers and
that can even be preferable, but I'm now in a situation where I'm running a
Windows build server and running Trac on a Linux system, and I wish they
were both running off the same OS instance. Of course, I'd end up with both
running on the Windows server since the build requirements drive
everything, and what I really wish is that I could just run a Linux server
;)

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debacle at debian

Aug 15, 2012, 2:33 AM

Post #8 of 12 (357 views)
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Re: Share the Wisdom: What's better? Hosting trac on Windows or Linux? [In reply to]

Quoting ChiefEngr <jwanello [at] gmail>:
> I'm thinking about rolling out somethng like Trac with SVN to handle
> revision control (and whatever database engine is the best way to go).

SVN is OK, esp. when using the Tortoise GUI on Windows. Anyway in
the open source community most people use git nowadays, which is
much more powerful than SVN.

> My question? Well, should I host this server on a Windows box or a Linux
> box?

For the end user, there is no difference at all. For the admin,
Linux is most likely the better choice than Windows, but YMMV.

As a Debian developer, I'm biased, but I would go for a Debian
server, or maybe for Ubuntu LTS.

> Or, is Trac the wrong tool? Is Redmine or something else better?

Trac is just fine, but ask on the redmine list as well to get
a more balanced view.

> So here is your chance -- someone is actually **asking** for your opinion!

You didn't ask, which database engine to use. I answer anyway:
Use PostgreSQL. SQLite gets slow on multiple users. You didn't
ask for the web server to use neither, but I suggest to use
Apache with mod_wsgi and the "apache2-mpm-worker" package.

Summary: Debian (or Ubuntu) Linux + Apache + WSGI + PostgreSQL
+ SVN (or git) + Trac, and you're fine.

Cheers

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alexandrul.ct at gmail

Aug 15, 2012, 3:06 AM

Post #9 of 12 (360 views)
Permalink

Re: Share the Wisdom: What's better? Hosting trac on Windows or Linux? [In reply to]

On 2012-08-15 12:33, W. Martin Borgert wrote:
> Summary: Debian (or Ubuntu) Linux + Apache + WSGI + PostgreSQL
> + SVN (or git) + Trac, and you're fine.

Or Debian + nginx + uWSGI + PostgreSQL + git/mercurial + Trac,
at least it works on my PC.

Eduard

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txcraig at gmail

Aug 15, 2012, 12:20 PM

Post #10 of 12 (357 views)
Permalink

Re: Share the Wisdom: What's better? Hosting trac on Windows or Linux? [In reply to]

Our team is doing all Windows development and we run Trac on Windows 2008
R2 Apache + PostgreSQL (for our latest deployment we used the Bitnami
installer with wsgi) + Subversion. We tried Mercurial and Git but found the
polish and feature set did not fit us well. We are in a corporate setting
and most of the advantages you see touted about DVCS [1] aren't so
important in a corporate setting. Our server is always available, our users
are in-house - the central model works well for us.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_revision_control

On Tuesday, August 14, 2012 2:58:21 PM UTC-5, ChiefEngr wrote:
>
> Hello Everyone,
>
> I'm hoping to pick your collective brain before I embark on this journey
> and make all sorts of bad choices.
>
> I'm thinking about rolling out somethng like Trac with SVN to handle
> revision control (and whatever database engine is the best way to go). I
> figure I'll also want Doxygen to plug in to this so we can take advantage
> of what it brings to the table.
>
>

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raju.rajsand at gmail

Aug 15, 2012, 7:41 PM

Post #11 of 12 (354 views)
Permalink

Re: Share the Wisdom: What's better? Hosting trac on Windows or Linux? [In reply to]

Greetings,

On Wed, Aug 15, 2012 at 1:28 AM, ChiefEngr <jwanello [at] gmail> wrote:
> Hello Everyone,
>
> I'm looking to set up a project tracking environment for a group of people
> who's primary desktop environment is Windows, but who are doing development
> under both WIndows and Linux systems. (To clarify, not a alot of
> cross-platform development going on here -- Windows based development is for
> Windows envrironments and Linux-based development is for Linux
> environments.) There's C(xx), Python, Perl, Java, and even MS Visual Studio
> work happening here.
>
> I'm thinking about rolling out somethng like Trac with SVN to handle
> revision control (and whatever database engine is the best way to go). I
> figure I'll also want Doxygen to plug in to this so we can take advantage of
> what it brings to the table.
>
> I'll probably want some kind of user-based access controls, but I'm not
> worried about having single login (although it would be very nice,
> especially from the WIndows side of things). We're not running a domain (AD,
> LDAP, et al).
>
> My question? Well, should I host this server on a Windows box or a Linux
> box? Is one going to be more seamless for my users? Is one going to be more
> seamless (and more stable) for me to get going? Which flavor of OS is more
> likely to work (on the Windows side - Windows Server (03, 08) vs a desktop
> Windows (XP, 7) [no Vista!]; on the Linux side - CentOS (5, 6), Fedora,
> Ubuntu)?

I had setup SVN+Trac on Centos 5 for about half a dozen sites with
full ACL. Yet to hear any issues. Couple of sites had 50+ devs, QA
etc. In one site they used SVN for everything -- even docs and
spreadsheets.

Mix of clients -- fedora, xp, ubuntu, centos et al.

In the process of setting up SVN+Trac on Centos 6 box may be this or next week.

HTH

--
Regards,

Rajagopal

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mark.cooke at siemens

Aug 15, 2012, 11:16 PM

Post #12 of 12 (353 views)
Permalink

RE: Re: Share the Wisdom: What's better? Hosting trac on Windows or Linux? [In reply to]

> On Tuesday, August 14, 2012 2:58:21 PM UTC-5, ChiefEngr wrote:
>
> Hello Everyone,
>
> I'm hoping to pick your collective brain before I
> embark on this journey and make all sorts of bad choices.
>
> I'm thinking about rolling out somethng like Trac with
> SVN to handle revision control (and whatever database engine
> is the best way to go). I figure I'll also want Doxygen to
> plug in to this so we can take advantage of what it brings to
> the table.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: trac-users [at] googlegroups On Behalf Of Craig A
> Sent: 15 August 2012 20:21
> To: trac-users [at] googlegroups
> Subject: [Trac] Re: Share the Wisdom: What's better? Hosting
> trac on Windows or Linux?
>
> Our team is doing all Windows development and we run Trac on
> Windows 2008 R2 Apache + PostgreSQL (for our latest
> deployment we used the Bitnami installer with wsgi) +
> Subversion. We tried Mercurial and Git but found the polish
> and feature set did not fit us well. We are in a corporate
> setting and most of the advantages you see touted about DVCS
> [1] aren't so important in a corporate setting. Our server is
> always available, our users are in-house - the central model
> works well for us.
>
> [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_revision_control

I agree with your comments on DVCS within a corporate environment.

I would also add my vote to "the best server is the one you already know how to administer".

We have had no significant issues with setting up Trac, subversion, PostgreSQL and apache (mod_wsgi) on Windows Server 2003 ~ I opted to install it all from scratch rather than use an installer so that I understand what is going on where (even though configuring mod_ldap was a PITA!)

~ mark c

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