Hi,
I think what Joel has layed out on the last thread is good enough for me. I believe the first priority is making the installation easier. Following standards is nice. I can't volunteer anymore time other that putting some opinion out on the forums. If Joel has time to volunteer and it improves things, I think he should go for it.
It maybe also be just possible to have a big tar ball since the current layout given by Joel can be done like that. Extract the tar ball on /web. Then run a script that will restore the pg_dump file then run on non-root port on localhost. Like 8080. The current installation of both aolserver and postgres seems to be easy enough. So we just make a reference system in a tar ball of openacs. Its a reference not a production system. John S tried to use vmware for this, which is also a great idea.