Question

Kevin Gessner, kindly replied to this question, “Can this be ran from the website with Windows 7, or must one use an MS OS Server along with the website?”

I do understand that few people want to write documentation, but you all lost me to the point I gave up and adopted another solution (Mercurial, TortoiseHG, VisualHg).

I don’t mind reading a few Q & As to tweak something, but to install and configure the basic setup by reading scattered Q & As doesn’t provide enough of a foundation for myself.

The documentation, via the link, “How do I configure Kiln for my server?”, seems to require MSSQL? However, the same documentation doesn’t seem to make clear under what circumstances (if any) MSSQL is not needed. Or if not used, what features (if any) would not be available.

While Kiln ‘client tools’, and Kiln for ‘my server’ are mentioned, I’m left unsure as to the distinction between the two.

Perhaps some definition of ‘small Kiln environment’ would be useful? Is this a Kiln specific issue, or something inherent to Mercurial?

Answer 1

I believe that the system requirements that we list at http://kiln.stackexchange.com/questions/1831/what-are-the-system-requirements-for-kiln are clear; I'll try to make them more prominent.

If you are running Kiln On Demand, then congratulations: you can use any platform that can run Mercurial. The most widely used client platforms we see are Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and various Unixes (e.g., FreeBSD and Solaris), roughly in that order. We do make something called "the Kiln Client" that currently only runs on Windows, but it's little more than the excellent TortoiseHg repackaged in a super-easy-to-install, preconfigured bundle with some Mercurial extensions. If you don't need the preconfigured part, though, you can still use all of the Kiln extensions, and TortoiseHg itself runs natively on Windows, OS X, Linux, and any other environment that has a good PyQt port.

These are also the operating systems you can use to work with Kiln if you're using a licensed install running on your own server.

If you opt to install the Kiln server software on your own box (i.e., not use Kiln On Demand), then you must run a Windows 2003, 2008, or 2008 R2 server, running SQL Server 2005, 2008, or 2008 R2, or SQL Server Express 2005, 2008, or 2008 R2. This is the only server and only database supported for running Kiln on your own server. If you don't want to use Windows or SQL Server, you can still use Kiln On Demand without issue.