Re: [Monotone-devel] FYI - mtn-browse

[Anthony Edward Cooper]

   Hi Nuno,

   Many thanks for your kind comments about mtn-browse. I hope people 
will find it useful :-).

   Unfortunately, there will be some issues that need ironing out that 
I have slipped up on or have not personally encountered.

   Installation Instructions:

   Although the INSTALL file is very small it does refer you to the 
README file for more detailed instructions. The installation process for 
Perl CPAN modules is nearly always a standard:

   perl Makefile.PL [PREFIX=<PATH>]
   make
   make test
   make install

   and although mtn-browse is an application and not a module I thought 
the above approach would be the best to use as it is written in Perl and 
will at least be consistent with CPAN.

   Whilst the above is documented on the CPAN FAQ I have also included 
the same instructions in more detail in the README file under the 
installation section. If my instructions are unclear of confusing then 
please send me specific issues and I can hopefully improve upon what is 
there (probably best to send such corrections/queries just to me 
directly so as not to both others on this distro). Looking at it now it 
might be better to have the dependency section before the installation 
one for a start.

   The Monotone::AutomateStdio library is actually included in the 
mtn-browse tar ball and so if you don't say otherwise, this will be 
installed and used in preference to any other version that you may 
happen to have lying around, it will live in mtn-browse's 
lib/perl/Monotone directory. So your second concern should not arise.

   GtkSourceView:

   I developed the application on WhiteBox 4 (think RedHat AS 4 Update 
3 - I heard about Centos after this!). Anyway this is not bleeding edge 
at about 3 years old. When starting on this project 18 months ago I 
deliberately didn't upgrade so as to help minimise dependency hell (i.e. 
you need the latest GTK/GNome libs etc). However the Perl bindings were 
current as RH do not ship them by default, or at least not in that 
version of REL. Hopefully you should find using slightly older versions 
of the Perl bindings will be fine as the underlying libraries that I use 
are even older than Ubuntu 8.04.

   I test mtn-browse on Whitebox and also Ubuntu 8.10 and it works 
fine. I assume that you are using the LTS release of Ubuntu? You could try:

   perl -e 'use Gtk2::SourceView; print Gtk2::SourceView->VERSION . "/n";'

   What does that give? Is it 1.000?

   If not you could try running with the version you have installed and 
see how you get on. To bypass dependency checking, not normally 
recommended, use the linux-installer script directly with --dep-level=0. 
Also use linux-installer -m to get help on the other options (the 
Makefile.PL script is simply a wrapper that uses linux-installer to do 
the installation whilst presenting it to the end user like a standard 
CPAN package). Alternatively and better, use the normal perl Makefile.PL 
approach and each time it complains about a dependency then use the perl 
command above, substituting the package name, to get the version number 
and then update the linux-installer script (see line 142). At least this 
way if you are actually missing a package then this will be trapped 
rather than getting some nasty runtime error when you run the application.

   Hopefully when you do get it running and its not too much trouble, I 
would like you to run a script to dump out the versions that you have 
got on your Ubuntu system so I can update the dependency versions. I'll 
send you the script sometime soon.

   Hope this helps.

   Tony.
Nuno Lucas wrote:
> Hello,
>
> On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 9:14 AM, Anthony Edward Cooper
> <address@hidden> wrote:
>   
> > Just a quick email to say that I have been developing a Linux desktop
> > application called mtn-browse that allows browsing of Monotone databases
> > without the need of a workspace. This works on Linux and Mac's OSX. It is
> > written in Perl/Gtk+ and makes use of Monotone::AutomateStdio, a CPAN Perl
> > library I have written that gives full access to the au stdio i/f.
> >
> > For further details please go to:
> >
> > http://www.coosoft.plus.com/software.html
> >     
>
> The application seems very nice, but could there be some more detailed
> installation instructions for those mortals that don't know nothing
> about perl and CPAN (other than "reading about it on the internet")?
> The "perl Makefile.PL" thing complains about missing "Gtk2::SourceView
> 1", but already installed it, as can be seen here:
>
> $ dpkg -l | grep SourceView
> ii  libgtk2-sourceview-perl                        1.000-0ubuntu3
>                                        Perl wrappers for the
> GtkSourceView widget
>
> I'm  using [K]Ubuntu 8.04.
>
> If I resolve this I will probably be blocked next on the
> AutomateStudio thing, as I have no idea on how to install a CPAN
> module.
>
> Anyway, the screen shots are pretty impressive, so good job.
>
>
> Regards,
> ~Nuno Lucas
>
>   
> > Cheers,
> >
> > Tony.
> >     
>
>   


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