According to the docs, there is a rule about support:
The only officially supported installs of Discourse are the Docker based beginner and advanced installs. We regret that we cannot support any other methods of installation.
If I’m not entirely mistaken, Discourse entirely uses OSS software like Ruby which are supposedly working alike on all operating systems. This rule basically doesn’t allow me - and a couple of companies and other users - to use Discourse at all although it would work flawlessly.
I only use FreeBSD and OpenBSD servers, and while I’m positive there would be not a single problem using Discourse right from the GitHub repository, the fact that the developers stated they won’t help me in case of issues (it’s a “we don’t want you to use Discourse with your server”, not a “Discourse will not work on your server”) prevents me from doing so.
I suggest you to lift the ban on sane operating systems just because they don’t support Docker or to provide alternative installation methods for *BSD and/or Windows servers.
AFAIK, being open source, anyone is free to configure their set-up as they wish.
dependencies, required versions, processes etc.
If you have a sense that being able to do that so that everything works flawlessly isn’t so easy to set-up, let alone maintain, then I’m sure you can understand how much work would be involved for the Discourse team to do so for varied set-ups as well.
Sounds like an opportunity for some talented sys ops to start a non-default install support service to me.
America, the land of opportunity
The problem is not that I can’t install it (I guess I could figure out how, although no official documentation is provided anymore), the problem is that I won’t get help if something breaks when I did, regardless of if it’s a bug in Discourse or in my setup.
That’s too risky; not because it’s “not easy to set up”. I assume it actually is.
Technically that’s possible, but AFAIK Docker requires some Linux kernel modules.
Other than that, there is no official way to run Docker on *BSD - which makes me suffer from the same situation in a different place. For no sane reason, again.
It seems the solution is in front of you, and no need to make a request on a ban that doesn’t exist. If BSD limits you from getting what you want, adapt.
I have been running Discourse bare metal for a over a year based on the “how to develop docs” though I am moving to a docker instance for easier updates and support of multisite. So it is completely doable. You will just have to have a better understanding of all the moving parts. No one is stopping you from doing this other than yourself.
Much like ports will preconfigure stuff like database settings and installing dependencies the docker instances do something. To be honest Docker tries to make up the the lack of things like ports in the linux world.
I’d assume there is no “Install Discourse on BSD” community (yes, I did ask Google first), rendering my statement that Discourse is intended to be a Linux-only software valid. A “not supported platform” which “can be got to run” is not something I would risk in a real-world scenario, sorry.
I just saw that you’re a co-founder. I surely was hoping you were more interested in making your software available to a wider audience without them having to jump through hoops.
