World: r3wp

this is true for each user.

Logs: I must say that I don't like much having all logs under current/, 
which is the webapp root folder. Putting all logs there (especially 
error.log which can contain critical information like user logins 
and password hashes) is bad practice  to me.

Maxim: ok, thx. i turned off the dividers and it's great like this

doc: i didnt say current, but current/log/

but in cheyenne's case it could be current/private/log/

Yes, everything that is under current/ might be at risk, so better 
avoid putting critical information there.

Same remark for Cheyenne webapp's private/ folder, you shouldn't 
put critical information there.

what should go there then and how is it more private than the protected 
area? (is it documented somewhere?)

let's collaborate on a directory structure here: http://piratepad.net/KkvkZ9AtME

Those "private" folders are protected from the requests by the webserver, 
but not by the OS. If an attacker finds a way to workaround the server's 
protection, better avoid giving him critical info.

I would say that logs shouldn't have the same user permission than 
the web accounts (prod, stg and devel1 in your example from email).

the devel1 should be able to access his own logs

and also should be able to clear them regularly

i always had to put the developers into the adm group so they can 
access the /var/log/apache2/ directory

where they saw a lot more than their interest

Agreed, but you could create per-user sub-folders there?

running their own app server (mongrel/thin/unicorn) helped a littlebit, 
but they couldn't easily test what was returned just by the webserver 
from cache / static files

the main problem with my setup was always the autonomity of the users

i had to edit config files when a new user joined the company

and i had to be aware where are they checking out the source of the 
projects they were working on and i also had to assign port numbers 
to them, so i could configure the reverse proxy in apache/nginx to 
connect to their app servers

Your need is pretty clear.

You could do the same (reverse proxy/nginx) with Cheyenne instances.

security in such a case is not a big concern (unless the machine 
get rooted :)

Cheyenne just needs to be able to pick the config file from a remote 
folder instead of just current one.

sure, but i would love to get rid of any external component, since 
cheyenne seems to be pretty close being able to cater for such a 
setup

Where would Cheyenne binary be in your scenario?

/usr/local/bin/

or sbin

then how could Cheyenne know where to look for config file ?

the only way I see is passing the config file path as command-line 
argument, something like:
cheyenne -p 8001 -conf /home/devel1/app/current/

Would such feature cover your needs for user autonomy?

if it still looks in the current directory for a httpd.cfg by default, 
then it's not even necessary

cd approot; cheyenne

cheyenne --conf approot

not a big difference

doesnt worth the trouble, i guess

is approot linux specific?

why not a mod_log  ;-)

might still be needed for MacOS X servers?

by app-root i mean that directory level which cheyenne will never 
try to reach above

ok

any relative path in a config file is normally calculated from there

again, why not allow these configs in the httpd.cfg file?

because, the httpd.cfg place is unknown to Cheyenne in this case 
;)

ah so you're talking about the embeded mode?

or then... what is "this case"  I'm obviously missing something here 
 :-)

nope, see the piratepad link from onetom, we were talking about relocating 
the whole Cheyenne working folder.

Dinner time here...

ahh.  k.

were we talking about such things? really? :D