[wpkg-users] Invalid XML path specified

[Rainer Meier]

Hi Peter,

On 26.02.2015 11:58, Peter Gough wrote:
> Firstly can I say 'thank you' for all of the work you've put into this project.
> You have saved me and I imagine others countless hours of

Thanks. Good to hear and you're very welcome. Although I didn't have as much 
time recently to invest in new features and enhancements as I would like to. But 
WPKG is still not dead.


> I've never previously made any changes to config.xml. The version on my WPKG
> server is from 2009 and I've checked and I didn't make any changes to the one I
> downloaded at that time. I have just copied a more recent version to my dev
> server but I get the same errors. I was under the impression that if wpkg.js,
> hosts.xml, packages.xml and profiles.xml were all in the same folder then all
> would be well.

This is entirely Ok, even in latest version.


> I've always maintained a separate folder for my packages, unsurprisingly called
> 'Packages', which contains individual .xml files for each package but my hosts
> are in the hosts.xml file in the root directory and in the same directory I use
> profiles.xml file to keep info about my profiles.
>
> Did something change that means I now need to edit config.xml or other files?

No. You don't need to.
Let me explain what happened:
In WPKG versions previously WPKG releases the paths to the packages, hosts and 
profiles were hard-coded. WPKG was looking up the following locations:
- packages.xml
- packages/*.xml
- hosts.xml
- hosts./*.xml
- profiles.xml
- profiles/*.xml

WPKG did silently ignore if one of the files/directories did not exist. Now in 
one of the latest packages I have introduced the ability to add as many paths to 
the search path (XML files or directories) as you would like to. Allowing you to 
specify completely different locations (on file system or HTTP servers) as you like.

In order to keep compatibility the defaults were set to the following values:
         <param name='packages_path' value='packages.xml|packages' />
         <param name='profiles_path' value='profiles.xml|profiles' />
         <param name='hosts_path'    value='hosts.xml|hosts' />

As a result WPKG behavior is exactly the same as in previous versions. Except in 
a very small detail. If one of the paths specified within packages_path, 
profiles_path or hosts_path does not exist, then WPKG knows that this is an 
error since the user on purpose specified a folder/file which does not exist. 
While previous versions would also simply have continued without even a warning 
if for example the packages/ folder had gone missing. Now WPKG knows that a 
missing packages/ folder is an error since you explicitly specified it to read 
the packages from there. Though as you noticed the error is logged but does not 
cause WPKG to stop.

Moreover the default distribution package of WPKG comes with empty packages/ 
profiles/ and hosts/ folders inside the distribution ZIP. Hence there is no 
error at all. Though if somebody of course removes one of the folders (as there 
are no files within) then of course WPKG prints an error about inconsistent 
configuration and folders.

There are two solutions to this:
- Create missing folders (even emtpy)
- Change configuration to tell WPKG not so use the folders

The second solution can be achieved by altering config.xml (e.g. for profiles 
and hosts):
         <param name='packages_path' value='packages.xml|packages' />
         <param name='profiles_path' value='profiles.xml' />
         <param name='hosts_path'    value='hosts.xml' />


If you don't want to alter config.xml try just creating hosts/ and profiles/ sub 
folders and the error will go away.

br,
Rainer