[ome-devel] OME Installer for OS X

[Ilya Goldberg]

Hello all

Installing OME is a well-known impediment to its use.  To improve the 
installation process, I've written an "installation wizard" that uses a 
graphical user interface to guide the user through discovering software 
dependencies and performing the OME installation without having to type 
commands at the terminal.  This initial installer is for OS X (10.3 and 
10.4) because this OS is readily at hand, and makes for a good "fixed 
target".  It is expected that "Wizards" for other well-defined 
platforms (RedHat, Debian, Suse, etc) will become available later on.  
It appears some people have had success getting OME to run on VMware, 
so a Windows installer is even possible - probably as a derivative of 
one of the Linuxes.

The installer figures out various parameters about your system, and 
includes all the software OME depends on to run starting from a 
factory-installed OS.  Its not really recommended for developers - its 
designed for end-user biologists - but it will try not to do the "wrong 
thing" when installing on a developer's machine.  The OME code-base 
that it will install is a recent CVS checkout:  Currently, this 
installer will not install a stable released version (2.4.0)!  The only 
external software it depends on is the optional "BSD subsystem" and 
"Developer Tools" installations available on all OS X system disks.  It 
will perform a check and inform the user if these need to be installed.

I would greatly appreciate if people were to try it out and provide 
feedback about its success, failure, and appropriateness.  Needless to 
say, please don't use this in a deployed environment - strictly for 
experimenting and trying things out.  Several developers and "end 
users" have tried it already, but we need a broader audience to 
exercise it.  The disk-image includes the source code for the installer 
as an XCode project (Applescript Studio).  Obviously, any patches or 
improvements would be most welcome.

http://users.openmicroscopy.org.uk/~igg/OME-Installer.dmg

Enjoy!
Ilya