Seafile 11.x installation still total mess after 10 months from my previous whining

So yeah, I tried to setup the newest fresh instance of Seafile 11.whatever on Mint 22 with MYSQL.

This is still ridiculous that the process is not straightforward (it says just use the setup script and you are ready to go! - fck no!). I had to change many things in the MYSQL server instance configuration also install some python3-django-some_magic_packages to get it going but finally I failed at starting the seahub thing (AttributeError: ‘NoneType’ object has no attribute ‘init_db_session_class’). I’m not touching that python stuff (for me it is super crazy to relay on such unreliable dev env) and I wasted enough time and energy to be disappointed anyway.

What happen with great portable solution with sqlite as it used to be before?What is the problem with embedding proper python libraries within the solution? What is the problem just to check the installation with top 5 linux distros briefly? Or what is the problem to put red warning that my os is not supported to not waste time if this is a case?

Maybe I’m just stupid because I not used the Ubuntu but better derivative, but this is super crazy that those kind of issues still exist and are not easy to solve.

I assume this project is completely DEAD at this point right?

The seafile devs seem to have spent the majority of their time developing new features, rather than broadening and testing OS compatibility. According to the OS compatibility table, the supported OSs for version 11 are “Ubuntu 20.04-24.04, Debian 10-12”. I would have guessed that Mint would be close enough to work (with maybe a few differences to the commands for installing libraries into the venv with pip), but it sounds like that’s not the case.

It is my understanding that SQLite has a relatively simple locking/concurrency system that was starting to hold back progress. For example, I think not being able to run seaf-fsck and seaf-gc with the seafile server running was because of SQLite limitations. Also performance seems to be better with a full database, at least web interface was noticeably more responsive for me when I switched over years ago.

It sounds to me like you might prefer to set up seafile with docker. The docker image runs in a container with its own separate filesystem and user-space. So when you install the docker image, you get a minimal ubuntu server (I think), and all the libraries and other dependencies for seafile, and seafile itself all in one bundle that should run on almost any linux (since it has all the dependencies included). I think this is where seafile’s future releases are going anyway, so I’ve spent some time learning how to deploy this way (but with podman because I prefer it to docker).

I don’t think seafile is dead. It might be nice if they used a more community-friendly development process so more people could contribute, but development is definitely happening. If you open that OS compatibility table link, and look at the roadmap and features tabs you can see what major features have been developed recently.

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