[Koha] step 3 loop in installer, and a long story

[MJ Ray]

Tim Middleton <tim at xxvii.net> wrote:
> That's my story. Points to perhaps take away if you got this far:

Thanks for the story.  Thoughts on the points:-

> - Might be nice if the web installer script, as a very first step, simply
> checked dependency problems and gave a simple error if it found them (there
> seems to be a check at step 2 actually, but if some dependencies are
> missing (CGI::Session!) one never gets that far.)

Dependency problems are mainly checked by Makefile.PL, but the story
said they were deliberately ignored.  Anything in the web installer
will only be basic checking.

> - weird how the languages in the dropdown on step 1 are seemingly in random
> order.

I won't comment much on this... would a simple sort() into
alphabetical be OK?

> - might want to discourage more strongly the use of postgresql if indeed it
> really doesn't work at all.

I thought "experimental" was pretty strong.  It may succeed or may
fail, like any experiement.  I believe it works for someone but I
don't have it working myself yet.

> - might be nice if install-CPAN.pl (whatever it does) could install CPAN
> modules locally as I did manually. Possibly this would be the case with the
> the .cpan/CPAN/MyConfig.pm i ended up using? I don't know. 

Yes, install-CPAN.pl would do that - it will use your CPAN shell
config, which needs configuring first.  install-CPAN.pl is an evil bad
and wrong hack, see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/blog/2007/koha

All it does is move the tarball into the local cpan download tree and
call CPAN::install on it, which should lets the CPAN shell sort out
the dependencies for some people.  Amongst its problems is that there
will be two unpacked copies of the koha tarball, which is not
brilliant.  Also, if it breaks, it just breaks and doesn't attempt to
recover.  Finally, after the first run, you have to move the tarball
out of the local cpan download tree before you can try again.

I really don't know if there's a "proper" way to do that.  I've not
seen it in other perl applications either.

> - are there generic install instructions anywhere? Something like an
> organized complete list of dependencies. A simple SQL file to set up the
> database? koha-conf.xml config file reference, which instructions on which
> settings absolutely needed to get the thing to run? 

I don't think this is going to be possible until *after* 3.0rc1 when
things should settle down enough to take SQL dumps and so on.  It also
needs people to do the work, of course... got time to help?

Thanks,
-- 
MJ Ray (slef)
Webmaster for hire, statistician and online shop builder for a small
worker cooperative http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ http://mjr.towers.org.uk/
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