RE: [Koha] ANNOUNCE: Koha perl dependency RPMs for Red Hat 9
I have to say this program is easily one of the worst to install Ive seen in 6 years of using open source. Usually such a multitude of errors and omissions has been reserved for commerical software, I find it very disappointing that koha is proving such a time waste. I have also found OS installs generally as simple and reliable as commercial stuff if not usually better, due usually to extream simplicity with no silly pretty pictures. I can live with a manual install, indeed so far a manual install has almost got me going where the auto install has failed badly. If the list of dependancies is available I can work throughthem and get running, at present I dont even seem to be able to do that! regards Steven On Mon 23 Jun 2003 at 08:22:06 +1200, Peter Harrison wrote:
On Monday 23 June 2003 01:22 am, COURYHOUSE@aol.com wrote:
"it would really help a lot of not-so-IT librarians to just install Koha without them knowing the hard work."
Correct.. In this manner and other things leading to the one click instal, shall any software package gain universal acceptance...
A manager once put me right on this point. Your application might be the best in the world, but if the install isn't easy, or doesn't work right, the user will never see how good it is.
That's a fair point, but it reminds me of the old adage: "Good, cheap, fast: choose any two." I'm not sure exactly how the adage would be worded as it relates to software installation, but I'm increasingly of the opinion that software which is functional, easy to install, and easy to upgrade is becoming increasingly harder to create.
This is a problem with open source in general - that installation is far harder than with commercial applications. Developers know how to build and
deploy, while users are not conversant with the tools - and shouldn't need to be.
Again, I agree. But that's why there are IT people -- system administrators, in particular -- who bridge the gap between users and software developers/vendors by installing and maintaining software. And regarding open source, there are many reasons why installation is often harder than for a similar commercial application. But the blame for that should usually be shared between the open-source application and the open-source operating system it runs on. My own experience is that Debian GNU/Linux makes it much easier to install software than RPM-based distributions (such as Red Hat). But there's no free lunch: packaging software for Debian is harder because of the more stringent quality controls which are required. What does all this mean for Koha? Well, I'm not a Koha developer (not even a user yet, although I hope to persuade our library one day), but here are the options as I see them to make installation easier: 1. Provide Koha packaged for each OS you want to support (e.g. Red Hat, Debian, SuSE, etc., or Windows even). In some cases this might require also supplying the required supporting packages (which is what started this whole discussion thread, I believe). The packaging of Koha for different distributions could be contributed by people other than core development people if necessary. 2. Provide Koha packaged for a single Linux distribution, and possibly incorporated on a custom Linux install CD image. 3. Improve the install scripts to check for required Perl modules and install them from CPAN if necessary. Any of those would mean considerable work, but should improve the ease of installation. (If we ever moved to Koha, we'd probably be able to contribute Debian packages.) But I guess the main point I'm trying to make is that users need to be realistic in their expectations of the installation process. To quote (possibly misquote) Einstein, things should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler. Tim. -- Tim Bell -- bhat@trinity.unimelb.edu.au -- System Administrator Trinity College, Royal Parade, Parkville, Victoria, 3052, Australia _______________________________________________ Koha mailing list Koha@lists.katipo.co.nz http://lists.katipo.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/koha
Hello, Unlike the installation of many other open source programs, Koha requires more than merely copying a handful of files to their proper location. The complexity of a Koha installation arises from the fact that the installer has ot configure a number of different programs and get them to work together -- not from including "silly pretty pictures." It has to check for and install the required Perl modules, locate the Apache configuration, modify it to work with Koha, get information regarding the installation of MySQL, connect to the MySQL server, create the necessary database and associated tables, etc. It is not the simplest of processes. We are only able to personally test it out of a small number of configurations. That being said, I have done 4 Koha installs on three different operating systems and ran into no difficulty using the installer. I do not recall you submitting any bug reports at http://bugs.koha.org regarding the installer. The devlopers are unable to devine any problems or errors that you might run encounter. We rely on the feedback from users to work out any bugs. It is just as much of your responsibility as it is ours to help out with bugs. If you require assistance with the installation, you are always free to message us or stop by the IRC channel; just this last week, I did a remote install via SSH. I do not know the required modules off the top of my head; however, a quick glance at Install.pm informs me that they consist of the following: DBI Date::Manip DBD::mysql HTML::Template Digest::MD5 MARC::Record Mail::Sendmail Net::Z3950 I hope that helps. Mike On Mon, 23 Jun 2003 15:00:36 +1200 "Jones, Steven" <sjones08@eds.com> wrote:
I have to say this program is easily one of the worst to install Ive seen in 6 years of using open source.
Usually such a multitude of errors and omissions has been reserved for commerical software, I find it very disappointing that koha is proving such a time waste. I have also found OS installs generally as simple and reliable as commercial stuff if not usually better, due usually to extream simplicity with no silly pretty pictures.
I can live with a manual install, indeed so far a manual install has almost got me going where the auto install has failed badly. If the list of dependancies is available I can work throughthem and get running, at present I dont even seem to be able to do that!
regards
Steven
Jones, Steven wrote:
I have to say this program is easily one of the worst to install Ive seen in 6 years of using open source.
You never have build gnucash from sources... this one is a real pain. Koha has an installer, that works in most cases (hoped at least). Note, also, that i've a problem with "one click install". Even if we could install Koha in 1 click, that would be (almost) useless imho. why ? Because it requires some PARAMETERS setups (branches, budgets, z3950 server, MARC parameters tuning...) that MUST be done in order to see what Koha can do. and this task CAN'T BE AVOIDED. I think, it's the biggest caveat for Koha => helping setting up the software. However, that's also why I think there is a place for commercial services on Koha too :-)) -- Paul POULAIN Consultant indépendant en logiciels libres responsable francophone de koha (SIGB libre http://www.koha-fr.org)
participants (3)
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Jones, Steven -
Mike Hansen -
paul POULAIN