See --Joey

Needs ghc newer than 7.6.3. It may be possible to port Data.Type.Equality and Data.Type.Bool to older versions; I got them to compile but they didn't work right. --Joey

I have a resourceconflict branch that adds this in Propellor.Resources, but it is not yet integrated into the Property types. --Joey

On the typed-os-requirements branch, I have the UsingPort 80 singleton implemented. As soon as I tried to apply it to some apache properties though, I realized a problem -- If multiple apache vhosts are defined each as its own property, then each of those properties can't have UsingPort 80. Because the idea is to not allow combining 2 properties that use the same pprt.

Similarly, Apache.installed can't have UsingPort 80, because each of the vhost properties requires that, and would inherit it.

So, this could be used for non-vhost stuff, like simple web servers, tor nodes, etc. But how to handle vhosts?

Of course, there could be a single property that defines all of a host's apache vhosts, and it could then have UsingPort 80. But that loses the flexible composition of properties.

I suppose we could include the server: UsingPort 80 Apache (or UsingPort 80 "apache" to avoid needing a data type with all the servers. Or even write it "apache" '> 80)
And allow combining properties that have the same server on the same port. Don't allow combining UsingPort 80 Apache with UsingPort 80 Ngnix


Also, it's not clear how to parameterize properties that support running a service on different ports. One way might be to declare the ports in the type signatures; the property code can then use usedPorts (getMetaTypes self) to get a port list.

So, we'd start with a property definition that does not use any ports:

virtualHost :: Domain -> WebRoot -> RevertableProperty DebianLike DebianLike
virtualHost domain docroot = 
    let self = property "vhost" (go (usedPorts (getMetaTypes self)))
    in self
  go [] = error "No ports specified"
  go ports = ...

And then to use it:

& virtualHost "" "/var/www" :: RevertableProperty (UsingPort 80 + DebianLike) DebianLike

But, this seems like a mouthful to write!

Maybe make a using that changes the metatypes of a property, adding a resource. That shortens what needs to be written some:

& virtualHost "" "/var/www" `using` (port :: UsingPort 80)

(port here is just an alias for sing, possibly constrained to only construct port singletons.)


A further problem with this is that it's not clear from the virtualHost type signature that it needs to have a port applied to it to get a usable property. So in a way, by adding this advanced type safety, we've lost the most fundamental type safety of all: Functions must have the right parameters applied!

Well then, let's require a parameter.

virtualHost :: Domain -> WebRoot -> Resource port -> RevertableProperty DebianLike DebianLike

Make Resource only able to be constructed by using, so the user must say:


So the type of using would be something like:

using :: (Resource r -> Property proptype) -> r -> Property (r + proptype)

(Complicated some as it needs to also support RevertableProperty.)