[Koha] Koha ZOOM install

[Jama Poulsen]

Hi,

Let me first say thanks to the developers of this feature-complete free library
management system.
 
I just installed Koha (v2.2.7) for the first time, since I wanted to test the
new faceted browsing interface shown at: http://zoomopac.liblime.com/

That worked fine, and then I bravely tried to install the zebra-plugin/dev_week
tree using this wiki page: http://wiki.koha.org/doku.php?id=installingzebraplugin226
 
Some gotcha's I encountered:
 - My Koha DB was called "Koha" not "koha" (as the zebra plugin config defaults to that)
 - I had to type "mkdir /koha/zebradb/biblios/lock", to make the zebra server start
 - various other paths were missing/incorrect
 - various missing Perl module dependencies (beyond the wiki page hints)

Now both the OPAC and koha-backend don't work anymore, I suspect there are
permission problems, since  get "Premature end of script headers:
mainpage.pl" but no other errors when I run the mainpage.pl script from the
command-line. The needed symlinks setups have gotten somewhat messy.
In my case some perl modules also needed symlinks, to get them resolvable.
My point here is, that its currently quite difficult to get it the new OPAC
interface to work. Do others share this opinion?

My questions:

  - The 2.2.7 code did not show the faceted browsing interface, is all that
    code in the dev_week tree? Is the Zebra-plugin required for the new OPAC
    interface? (I've not fully studied all the code, yet ;-)

  - If all of the "Koha ZOOM" package is opensource, has anybody created a 
    (non-commercial) "/koha" package with all the right sources and layout,
     so one just needs to:
     - install the dependencies (perl modules, yaz, zebra server, etc.),
     - configure Apache (provide a standard example that fits with the
       standard /koha setup)
     - Setup the CGI environment (describe permissions and logging in docs)?

    I think the install process could be simplified a lot using such a
    pre-build "Koha ZOOM" package. All the different layouts and old config
    files are really confusing IMHO.

    A more complete list of Perl modules and other dependencies (compile yax
    with libxml2, etc..) would also be nice have in the documentation.

    I'm willing to work on such a package, and the install documentation
    (if there is interest), but I need to be able to understand what pieces
    are needed to setup "Koha ZOOM" correctly first.

regards,

Jama Poulsen
http://debianlinux.net
http://wikicompany.org