[M3devel] Getting ready for new users (Re: HEADS UP: Release engineering)

[jay.krell at cornell.edu]

More later but:
  how about we drop a sh wrapper or symlink  in installroot/../bin so  
$path usually unchanged? And ensure ld_library_path needed on the  
fewest systems possible.

  - Jay (phone)

On Jun 25, 2009, at 2:27 PM, hendrik at topoi.pooq.com wrote:

> On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 08:43:11PM +0000, Jay wrote:
>>
>> I just ran ./make-dist.sh.
>> I admit I didn't take the time to test out the archives.
>> lzma I made just via
>>  gunzip foo.tgz
>>  lzma foo.tar
>
> No need to apologise.  These archives seem to have worked better than
> the last ones I tried.
>
> I'm specifically trying to help you guys make it work by acting like a
> naive user and reporting what goes wrong or might confuse a naive  
> user.
> The show-stopper for the naive user in this report was the error  
> message
> that, as far as I can tell, occurs at the end of installation.
>
> If my goal was just to get cm3 working, I'd have accomplished it
> already, as an experienced user.  IN fact, I'm still going to set my
> $PATH properly to find out if I already have a working cm3 from this
> installation.  The last one I tried a few seeks ago (a version of min)
> was usable long before I finished the whole installation process.   
> After
> juat unzipping the archives and cooking up some suitable $PATH  
> entries,
> I was compiling.  But from the instructions I was following, it looked
> like I had a long way to go yet.
>
> Half the problems I'm coming up with are probably infelicities if
> documentation.  Like the 'if' in that sentence that should have been
> 'of'.
>
>>
>>
>> For Interix I cut down the list of collections.
>>
>>
>> It is common for multiple compression formats to be used.
>> lzma often shrinks the files by half, though, oddly, sometimes not  
>> at all.
>> lzma admittedly has been superceded xz.
>>
>>
>>
>> I know it is difficult and I'm not helpful here, but we should keep  
>> in mind the ideals:
>>
>>  apt-get install foo
>
> We still have to get to this point.  Only I fink it's cm3 we want, not
> foo.
>
>>
>>  download foo.exe and run it, hit next next next finish
>>
>>  download foo.tar.gz, tar xf foo.tar.gz, cd foo, read INSTALL, ./ 
>> configure, ./make, su, ./make install
>>
>>
>>
>> to measure ourselves by.
>>
>>
>>
>> There's no need for Winzip if we use .zip files, explorer handles  
>> them.
>
> That's useful.  Unless you're paranoid enough to never let your  
> WIndows
> machine come near a network.  It's an effective way to avoid viruses.
>
>>
>> It is also easy to make self extracting .zip files.
>>
>> And untrusting users can just run unzip on them or rename them  
>> to .zip and open with Explorer, it's quite nice, except that for  
>> running, they don't run on many systems.
>>
>>
>> - Jay
>>
>>
>>> Date: Thu, 25 Jun 2009 18:52:06 +0200
>>> From: wagner at elegosoft.com
>>> To: m3devel at elegosoft.com
>>> Subject: Re: [M3devel] Getting ready for new users (Re: HEADS UP:  
>>> Release engineering)
>>>
>>> Quoting hendrik at topoi.pooq.com:
>>>
>>>> On Thu, Jun 18, 2009 at 01:43:34PM +0200, Olaf Wagner wrote:
>>>>> Quoting hendrik at topoi.pooq.com:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Is it time for me to make another try at installing cm3 from  
>>>>>> scratch?
>>>>>> In particular, do you think most of the problems I reported with
>>>>>> documentation and archives, etc., have been solved? I really  
>>>>>> want to
>>>>>> get m3 working on this laptop, but I also want to provide the  
>>>>>> most
>>>>>> useful problem reports.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I'm definitely trying to act like a naive user in these  
>>>>>> installation
>>>>>> attempts (which means I'm trying to act stupider than I am).
>>>>>
>>>>> I've now put some initial release engineering documentation onto
>>>>> birch, available at
>>>>>
>>>>> http://www.opencm3.net/releng
>>>>
>>>> Well, I started with that page, assuming that it will be the one  
>>>> Google
>>>> finds when the release is finally out. I'm continuing to act like a
>>>> naive user (but I'm probably not naive enough to give the  
>>>> instructions a
>>>> real test).
>>>>
>>>> It seems to have installed, but I'm not sure, because the installer
>>>> ended with an error message. Here are the gory details.
>>>>
>>>> Started from http://www.opencm3.net/releng/
>>>>
>>>> I found the description quite clear. It's still not clear just what
>>>> packages are in cm3-core and not in cm3-min or why I would want  
>>>> them,
>>>> but it was clear I wanted to start with cm3-core. For example, is  
>>>> there
>>>> a UI library in cm3-core?
>>>>
>>>> (Oh why is it so hard to cut and paste from the web page to this  
>>>> emacs
>>>> buffer on my laptop?)
>>>
>>>> cm3-bin-core-LINUXLIBC6-d5.8.1-RC1.tgz dowwnloaded without a  
>>>> problem. A
>>>> beginner with Linux might have difficulty knowing whether to use  
>>>> the
>>>> .lzma version.
>>>
>>> LINUXLIBC6 along with all lmza archives were created by Jay;
>>> I'd rather have limited the available formats. Of course this needs
>>> to be documented if we provide .lzma files.
>>>
>>>> Ah! I clicked on the "standard, recommended" link (I hadn't  
>>>> realised it
>>>> was a link) and found the list of what packages are in the .tgz  
>>>> file.
>>>> One layout comment -- it consists of a series of sections, each  
>>>> starting
>>>> with a title and ending with a browse-sources link. Each title  
>>>> needs to
>>>> look more prominent than the text or the link. At the moment, the  
>>>> link
>>>> is what stands out. More blank lines between the entries then  
>>>> within
>>>> them would make them group better.
>>>>
>>>> Next: do tar -xzvf cm3-bin-core-TARGET-VERSION.tgz
>>>>
>>>> Again, that worked. I do find myseelf wondering it that would be  
>>>> the
>>>> correct command line if I were uzinng Winzip on Windows, though.
>>>> (that's wha tthe insstruction seems to say)
>>>
>>> No, Winzip of course is a GUI application where you are supposed to
>>> point and click with the mouse...
>>>
>>>> Next I run ./cminstall /usr/local/cm3
>>>>
>>>> It asks mme whether /home.hendrik/cm3 is to be the root directory  
>>>> for
>>>> cm3. The naive user doesn't know what that means. Nor do I, for  
>>>> that
>>>
>>> This is strange. cminstall shouldn't ask any questions by default.
>>> But as mentioned before, I only built the archives for FreeBSD4 and
>>> AMD64_LINUX (and later PPC_DARWIN). Jay, what exactly did you  
>>> package
>>> there? Or am I misunderstanding something here?
>>>
>>>> matter. I'm guessing that it's where to unpack and work during
>>>> installation, but that it won't be needed later. That I can even
>>>> deleete the entire /home/hendrik/cm3 directory tree after  
>>>> installation.
>>>> That in fact when I instll packages later I can download them to,  
>>>> say,
>>>> /anywhere and install them from /anywhere and they'll still get
>>>> installed in the proper place. But I don't know. For now, I'll just
>>>> accept the defaults.
>>>>
>>>> Next problem:
>>>>
>>>>> Installing CM3 in: /usr/local/cm3
>>>>> This may take a few minutes...
>>>>>
>>>>> Unexpected problem: cannot list current directory: errno=2
>>>
>>> I've never seen that. Can you provide the complete installation log?
>>> We may also need a system call trace to track this down...
>>>
>>>>> Please feel free to contact m3-support at elego.de to troubleshoot  
>>>>> this
>>>> problem.
>>>>
>>>> Current directory? That's an uninformative message. Possibly it  
>>>> refers
>>>> to /usr/local/cm3? Which really doesn't exit yet? Should your
>>>> instructions say to create it and make sure it has the right write
>>>> permissions?
>>>>
>>>> Noooo. that's not the reason. /usr/local/cm3 has been created. And
>>>> populated with lots of subdirectories. /usr/local/cm3/bin  
>>>> contains a
>>>> few executables and lots of other files. It turns out I did have
>>>> permission to write on /usr/local. I don't know what directory it's
>>>> referring to.
>>>
>>> Strange. I tried an installation on FreeBSD which succeeded without
>>> any problems.
>>>
>>>> What next?
>>>
>>> Let's have a look at Install.log and hear what Jay has to say about
>>> LINUXLIBC6.
>>>
>>> Thanks for the feedback,
>>>
>>> Olaf
>>> -- 
>>> Olaf Wagner -- elego Software Solutions GmbH
>>> Gustav-Meyer-Allee 25 / Gebäude 12, 13355 Berlin, Germany
>>> phone: +49 30 23 45 86 96 mobile: +49 177 2345 869 fax: +49 30 23 45 86 95
>>> http://www.elegosoft.com | Geschäftsführer: Olaf Wagner | Sitz:  
>>> Berlin
>>> Handelregister: Amtsgericht Charlottenburg HRB 77719 | USt-IdNr:  
>>> DE163214194
>>>
>