For a few weeks now I have been working on and off getting Koha packaged for Debian. Here are my thoughts and plans. To start with, I am targeting Koha 3.2 for Debian squeeze. Neither is released yet, but both will hopefully release in a few weeks or months, respectively. The reason I am targeting those is that when I find things that need fixing, it is probably easier to fix them in a development version than a released version. There were five CPAN modules missing from Debian squeeze that Koha needs. I have made Debian packages from them, and they are currently in Debian unstable. Unless there are problems, they should get into Debian squeeze in a week or two, and hopefully will be part of the actual Debian release. If any further software Koha needs, but is missing from Debian, I'll see about getting that packaged and uploaded as well. CPAN modules are mostly very easy. My near-term goals are as follows: * Get something usable out there soonish. It does not have to be perfect and final, just needs to work. I will make some opnionated choices, to keep things simpler for packaging. For example, Zebra will be required. More flexibility can come later after the basic packages work well and have been tested in various scenarios. * The koha package is meant for someone who wants to set up Koha for themselves. Installing the package will set up a host for one instance of Koha. The package will take care of dependencies, set up the databases, cron jobs, start Zebra, and do everything else to make Koha just work. Actual configuration of Koha will happen via the browser, on the first login to the intranet page, as if Koha had been installed from source. * Those who want to set up a host for multiple Koha instances can install the koha-common package instead. That package does not create any Koha instances , but contains scripts that will create, remove, enable, disable, dump, and restore Koha instances. There can be any number of Koha instances on the same host, and each instance will be independent of each other. * Set up a Debian apt repository at debian.koha-community.org to serve the Koha Debian packages. Koha is a large project and it will take a bit of effort to get it ready for inclusion into Debian, so the new repository will be helpful to those wanting to install Koha on their Debian machines. As a quick example, what I want to achieve is this: if you want to install Koha on your server, do this: apt-get install koha If, on the other hand, you want to host several Koha instances on the same server, do this instead: apt-get install koha-common koha-create --name=kotkahs --description='Kotka High School' \ --domain=kotkahs.example.com --defaults=highschool This will set up a new Koha instance, including databases, etc. It will create a new superlibrarian user, and populate the database with some sample content. The sample content will take care of the initial setup questions that Koha normally asks on the first intranet login. Instead, the instance will be immediately ready to use. In either scenario, it will be possible to enable/disable the Koha instance, for example during system maintenance. koha-disable kotkahs apt-get upgrade koha-enable kotkahs Further, it will be possible to do a dump of an instance, and later restore the instance from the dump, possibly even on a different machine. The dump will contain both the database and all configuration files. koha-disable kotkahs koha-dump kotkahs koha-remove kotkahs scp /var/spool/koha/kotkahs/* newhost.example.com: ssh newhost.example.com koha-restore kotkahs-* koha-enable kotkahs The dumps will be useful as backups as well. I've implemented most of that, although in a quick-and-dirty manner. I'm working on polishing things now, but before I go much further, I thought I'd notify everyone and ask the big questions... Is this something others would find useful? Am I missing something that would be useful to many? I am not currently looking for test users or patches, but I will announce when I have something that I think is reasonably safe for others to try.