Item10803: CompareRevisionsAddOn causes illegal {SwitchBoard} value in Foswiki configuration (affects ApacheLogin users)

Priority:	CurrentState:	AppliesTo:	Component:	WaitingFor:
Urgent	Closed	Extension	CompareRevisionsAddOn	PaulHarvey

On a fresh checkout, a full run through configure will eventually produce an illegal value for {SwitchBoard}{compareauth} (this script is used in ApacheLogin configurations to authenticate access to the compare script):

You are about to update 1 setting
{SwitchBoard}{compareauth}   HASH(0x163e2f8)

The lib/Foswiki/Contrib/CompareRevisionsAddOn/Config.spec file is wrong; the {SwitchBoard}{compareauth} entry is missing its type information, so Foswiki's configure UI treats the value is a string (instead of a hash).

So the Config.spec should look like this:

# ---+ Extensions
# ---++ CompareRevisionsAddOn
# **PERL**
# This setting is required to enable executing the compare script from the bin directory
$Foswiki::cfg{SwitchBoard}{compare} = {
    package  => 'Foswiki::Contrib::CompareRevisionsAddOn::Compare',
    function => 'compare',
    context  => {
        diff      => 1,
        comparing => 1
    }
};
# **PERL**
# This setting is required when using ApacheLogin and the user needs to be authenticated when executing the compare script
$Foswiki::cfg{SwitchBoard}{compareauth} = {
    package  => 'Foswiki::Contrib::CompareRevisionsAddOn::Compare',
    function => 'compare',
    context  => {
        diff      => 1,
        comparing => 1
    }
};
1;

The problem now, is that we have shipped a broken Config.spec in the last couple of releases of CompareRevisionsAddOn (incl. the version shipped in Foswiki 1.1.3), and simply fixing the Config.spec isn't enough.

So I've add a Configure checker that will flag an error in the configure UI if the switchboard entry is invalid, with instructions to copy-paste the value from {SwitchBoard}{compare} above.

-- PaulHarvey - 28 May 2011

Although this is a terrible mistake on my part, this switchboard entry is only used when:

• You are using ApacheLogin
• You are not authenticated
• The topic denies access to WikiGuest
• You directly access an /bin/compare or /bin/compareauth URL

-- PaulHarvey - 28 May 2011