The source tarball of MoinMoin already ships with a spec file so that rpm based updates should be preferred. Unfourtunately just updating the rpm is not enough. There need some things to be fixed after an update.
MoinMoin stores its SystemPages or HelpPages in a so called underlay directory (see data_underlay_dir in wikiconfig.py). The basic idea is to be able to seperate the content of the wiki from its auxilliary pages. And you can also share the (readonly) underlay between different wiki instances on one server.
Those pages are language dependend. In the standard source / RPM of versions < 1.9 only english is included. So if you want to provide localized system pages to your users you have to call the SystemPagesSetup wiki page to install the language pack like described in the MoinMoin wiki.
In order to be able to write to the underlay directory from within the wiki software you need to chown it to the apache user (the rpm sets it to root:root).
As the language packs are also installed in the underlay directory it could happen that after some time the whole directory is messed up with a mixture of files that came from rpm and language packs that were installed manually. To make it even worser it is not guaranteed that old versions of language packs are cleanly removed when installing a new one.
Starting with 1.9 MoinMoin does not even include the english version, so you definitely have to visit SystemPagesSetup after installation. But at least there will be no confusion between rpm / no rpm based files in future.
Anyway if you stay with version 1.8 it is wise to clean up the underlay data dir after an update and re-install any language you want to have. I wrote a script which cleans up files in /usr/share/moin/underlay not found in and rpm file listing of the moin package.
Just call moinmoin_underlay_rpm_cleanup.py to see which files would be deleted. To actually delete files append the -d option to it.
Summary, steps to do after an update:
chown -R apache:apache /usr/share/moin/underlay/- Adapt “Alias /moin_static_versionsnumber” in httpd.conf
- Call
moinmoin_underlay_rpm_cleanup.pyand double check its output before providing the-doption - Call
SystemPagesSetupand install the languages