How To Create an Everserve Package Specification

The usability of Everserve depends on the administrator's ability to write and deliver packages easily. XML may or may not be a familiar technology. This document will describe some techniques for package creation and does not assume an understanding of XML.

Your first choice may be to use the Everweb graphical user interface that is installed on the publisher machine. It contains a package editor page that will allow you to intuitively create new package specification files. The program has two views, work with either the XML code as text or view the package as a set of screen objects. This interface is also used for editing existing packages.

You may use any XML editor (e.g. Merlot or XML Spy) for creating and editing package specification files. A set of rules (also known as a DTD) for the package specification is found in the Packages directory of the Everserve publisher installation. <$EVERSERVE_INSTALL_DIR/server/Packages/package_spec.dtd> This file can plug into any XML editor program. Use the package templates in the same directory to develop your own package specifications with word processing programs such as vi and Wordpad.

There are four possible attributes contained in a package specification file summarized in this table:

file-spec (source, target)	deliver a single file from the publisher to all targets
directory-spec (source, target)	delivers filesystem objects. The directory spec can be flagged as recursive to deliver subdirectories
command-spec (commandline)	execution of the operating system commands specified as a string following the equals sign
command-spec (file)	deliver a script file from the publisher, execute the file parameter that follows the equals sign

You will find additional details on the subject in the Everserve Administrator's Guide. Information regarding the recurse, delta and version attributes of a package-specification file are documented thoroughly in this guide.