[Gnumed-devel] Re: install instructions

[Andreas Tille]

On Mon, 10 Nov 2003, Hilmar Berger wrote:

> > Even on GNU/Linux (and other serious OS' :-)) we should think about coding
> > an
> > installer that has very few dependencies. This installer should gather
> > information about ones packages and install what is necessary. Ideally it
> > could detect a missing python installation and get it via apt-get, yast
> > etc.
> IMHO getting package dependencies right is the task of the package manager
> (apt, yast, rpm).
Definitely.  Different distributions have different names for packages and
not every distribution has kind of clever tools like auto-apt. -)

> Then the installer should provide a way to comfortably configure and install
> client and/or server. Parts of this could be started from within a
> postinstaller script, too. I do not have to much experience with those 
> scripts, but I
> believe that  the user interface available from within  this postinstall
> scrtipts depends heavily on the responding package manager and distribution.
Yes.  It's called debconf for Debian and current packages use some
debconf questions, but this has to be enhanced.

> The installer should be modular and use plugins so that GUI/console versions
> can be easily derived.
Debconf is this kind of modular by design.  It has readline (very simple),
dialog (ncurses), Gtk+ (user friendly) and other interfaces I do not remember.

> I guess that we have to make at least some assumptions here. It should not
> be a common problem that installed python packages don't work.
Yes.  You will need Python to run GnuMed anyway.  So if Python is broken at
installation time you've got something to do first.  It is no GnuMed issue
to fix your broken Python.

Kind regards

         Andreas.