[ome-devel] OME install woes

[august]

Ilya,

thanks for writing.   I'm in the process now of reinstalling the machine
to make sure I have a fresh platform with which to deal.  I will then
proceed to intall the CVS version (which I should have done from the
beginning) and let you know how I make out.


> Sadly, and despite many efforts, we have once again arrived at a  
> state where a great deal of installation (and other) problems have  
> been fixed, but a new stable release has not been made.  The "release  
> early, release often" mantra has somehow gotten lost on us.
> 
> We have deeply religious views about not breaking the code on CVS  
> (especially in HEAD), and generally if anyone does so, they are  
> beaten soundly and severely.  

awesome,  I hope this involves some torture too, like making them watch
old re-runs of "thirtysomething"   

Most of us use code from CVS in our  
> daily work, so any problems are quickly noticed and fixed.
> We've been talking about a release for a while now, and obviously it  
> has not happened.  Maybe one way to do this is to simply release on a  
> monthly schedule regardless of what happens.  We have enough of a  
> testing framework to do nightly tests and report the results on our  
> web-site.  If more tests are needed to call something a "release",  
> then we should list them (preferably in the form of an automated  
> script), and go from there.  This type of release lag may be  
> acceptable for commercial software, but it is totally out of the norm  
> for OSS - especially for a project as active as this one.
> 
> Apologies for any misunderstandings or duplicate effort.

no worries.   I've installed OME on a number of systems already and only
ran into one situation where I attempted to install for 3 days straight
and wasn't able to do it.     

My concern at the moment is whether or not an install script is the
right way to tackle the problem of installation.   It seems to me that
there is no real way to cover all the different modules and dependancies
that go with each and every system and setup.   I feel it would be
better to have a "recipe" or "blueprint" for installation which is 
broken down to the basics :  
	what you need the web server to do, what you need perl and
	mod_perl to do, and what you need postgres to do.   

Unfortunately, of all the times I've installed OME, not once has the install 
script been successfull on the first (or even 5th) go.  I think some blueprints
for the install would really help when running into errors and allow one
to debug all the steps where things could go wrong.

I'll install the CVS version and let you know how I make out.   I'll
also update the notes I made if am successful.

best -august.