Shibboleth Developers

[David Bantz <>]

My apologies if my comment seemed in any way a slam or irresponsible dig
at the Shibb development team, who I know to be responsive and
tireless and patient in their assistance to those deploying Shibboleth.

I wish I could be more specific and detail the precise points at which
we initially had trouble in installing and configuring Shibb (IdP and  
SP).
However, it seems, phenomenologically, to be a little like describing  
the
initial trouble I had learning to ride a bicycle or see anything in  
abstract art.

The documentation covers a wide range of possible installation  
environments;
while it is essential to support multiple environments, it does put a  
burden on
the naive deployer to navigate a single thread through a maze of  
options and
choices; the interdependencies of those choices are not always obvious
except in hindsight.  Providing the sort of step-by-step instructions  
a first-time
deployer might like would require perhaps dozens of separate documents
based on the exact versions of server OS, containers, and more, each one
a fragile document subject to change with the next security patch or  
version
update of some component, so I understand whyno one has produced such
a suite of documents.

David Bantz

On Wed, 23 Sep 2009, at 09:16 , Scott Cantor wrote:

> David Bantz wrote on 2009-09-23:
> > I'm not sure whether Alessandra means to "develop" - write a new SP -
> > or deploy the existing SP.  Our experience has been that's it's very
> > helpful to have gone through the installation and configuration of SP
> > before you try deployment the first time ;-}
>
> I'm pretty sure he means develop, to which the only answer I will  
> bother to
> give is "don't" and if you must, look at
> https://spaces.internet2.edu/display/SHIB2/TechnicalSpecs
>
> > Seriously, walking through the process with someone familiar is very
> > helpful; only then, in our experience, are you in a position to  
> > rely on
> > the documentation at https://spaces.internet2.edu/display/SHIB2/Home
>
> The problem is that this isn't the intention, and when people tell  
> us that,
> they stop there. By not explaining why the documentation is somehow
> unsuitable, we aren't in a position to do anything about it.
>
> -- Scott