You can do static sites under Aolserver if you wish, no need to run Apache for that.
My first pass aolserver-3.3+ad13 RPM is indeed on my site already (well spotted!), but has had near-zero testing so far, and the companion aolserver-nsxml RPM (only needed for OpenACS 4.x) does not incude libxslt functionality.
I am hoping to test the newer aolserver setup a bit more, and create a version in which aolserver-nsxml uses libxslt...I just need to make the time to do so.
If you are already comfortable doing from-source installs, then either source or RPMs will "work" for you. My personal opinion is that if you pick a distribution based on RPM, it makes sense to use RPM for things you add to that machine too, for overall ease of system management.
If you want a halfway approach, there's nothing to stop you grabbing my SRPMs and recompiling them on your machine and then installing from the resulting locally-created binary RPMs. If that makes you feel more 'in control' of the server as a whole, it might be worth considering.
One thing I did notice in my early testing -- the current aD aolserver-3.3+ad13 tarball does not compile/install nsvhr and nsunix modules by default, whereas the older aolserver-3.2+ad12 tarball did.
I don't know why that changed. If you are likely to be doing virtual hosting using AOLserver, that might be something to explore a bit further. I'll probably add nsvhr and nsunix back into the next aolserver-3.3+ad13 RPM set I create, unless I find some clear good reason not to do that.
Lastly, there's no reason you couldn't install aolserver-3.2+ad12 initially from RPMs, and upgrade to 3.3+ad13 once I release an official set using that version of the codebase.
On the file location issue... where the files go doesn't affect whether the server works anyway. If you maintain a bunch of servers, all using the aD-style /web/servername hierarchy, it may be that you should stay consistent with that for easier system administration?
But if we ever want to see OpenACS RPMs included in a distribution,
we can't use /web, it breaks all the rules. I didn't invent the 'new' locations out of thin air, I used the PG RPMs as an example to follow, since Lamar has been doing this kind of work (and had the RPMs included in Red Hat) for longer than I have.
If you need a transition plan for your tech staff (or just for yourself) as you get used to the new location, maybe a symlink:
mkdir /web
ln -s /var/lib/aolserver/servers/defaultacs /web/server01
or similar would be handy?
