Re: [Health-dev] Should distribution packaging solve the installation/configuration issues our users are having?

[Mathias Behrle]

* Emilien Klein: " [Health-dev] Should distribution packaging solve the
  installation/configuration issues our users are having? (was: Error
  connection client and server tryton, gnuhealth 2.8.1 ubuntu 14.04.1)" (Tue,
  10 Feb 2015 17:43:01 +0100):

Hi Emilien,

> When I read a number of recent messages of the type "can't install",
> "can't connect", etc. I do feel that there is a need for a package
> coming from the distro's repository, that would auto-configure all
> that stuff. It would make a lot of "beginner" users happy.
> Of course, us veteran developers and system administrators have no
> problem setting all these things up, and doing the occasional
> debugging/reading through logfiles to see where it went wrong, but a
> lot of our users are naturally not that tech-savvy.
> 
> This in reference to the discussion we had a couple of months ago,
> when I was working on the Debian package (which we removed from the
> repository, but the discussion was recently restarted due to the
> latest version of GNU Health being released).
> If you're interested, have a look at the use cases and personas I had
> described in this message [0]. Be warned, it is a long message ;)
> [0] https://lists.debian.org/debian-med/2013/09/msg00077.html

So also the reply is worth reading;) and applies today as well:
https://lists.debian.org/debian-med/2013/09/msg00079.html

IMO you try/tried to solve problems with a faulty concept. Apart from
conceptional misunderstangs with respect to database layout and security
questions the nature of a demo instance is basically different from a production
server. Moreover you shouldn't want to upgrade forcefully a production instance
of gnuhealth to the next/last version as soon as available. OTOH you should
provide the bug fix releases of upstream in a timely manner for the relative
supported series. That's what we have made possible and what we are doing on
debian.tryton.org.

> There is no particular need for an answer on this message, but I just
> wanted to express my opinion as I've been having this thought a couple
> of times already this week, when reading the messages on the mailing
> list...

To the (highjacked;) subject of this mail:
I don't think, that distributions should/can solve all use cases of an
application like Tryton/gnuhealth. Especially the setup of ready-to-use
preconfigured environments is much easier to solve with Virtual Machines,
Docker files, Vagrant files, etc.. There is the gnuhealth VM made by
Axel available, there could be done a more lightweight solution if someone wants
to. But please do not confound the setup of such an environment with a
production environment of a hospital or a doctor's surgery. There is still only
one thing applicable for the responsible administrator: RTFM.

Cheers,
Mathias


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    Mathias Behrle
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