2. What the Apache plugin needs to know from you

In order to add support for your module or directive the Apache plugin needs to know a few things.

• Where is your module located? : At plugins/apache/modules you can find current supported modules each one of them has a subdirectory which contains the necessary files
• Which files are necessary to support your module? :
  • moduleDescription.xml: Describes the module and gives pointers for the other files
  • directives.xml: Describes the directives that we are configuring
  • propertyPages.xml: Arrange the directives for presentation to the user
  • specialCases.tcl: For parsing complex directives back and forth between the XML format and httpd.conf format

2.1 moduleDescription.xml

• Description of module: name, where to find directive and property pages definition, special cases definition and description of the module
• Nodes in which we are interested: Which nodes (main server, virtual hosts, etc) we want our property pages to appear in
• Description of special cases: Apache uses httpd.conf format and Comanche uses XML format. If the directives are simple, the mapping will be automagically done by Comanche, if not we specify the name of the procedures here

2.2 specialCases.tcl

Actual Tcl code used to convert from XML format to httpd.conf

2.3 directives.xml

Description of the directives that belong to this module

2.4 propertyPages.xml

Description of the property pages for this modules. They are presented to the user during configuration. They arrange the directives on the screen logically. It is possible to have different versions for beginners and for advanced users.

2.5 messages

In the subdirectory messages/ the texts corresponding to the messages are stored there so they can easily be translated by other people. The messages are stored with a suffix corresponding to the language: messages.en, messages.es, etc.