Re: [ANN] GSL Shell 2.0 beta1 release

[clemens fischer <ino-news@...>]

Francesco Abbate wrote:

> 2011/11/8 clemens fischer <...>:

>> 'uname -rms' -> Linux 3.0.8-spott x86_64
>>
>> I didn't have to edit any files to get a build:
>>
>>  make DESTDIR=/opt/gsl-shell/git-2 install
>>
>> is all I did.  Afterwards I ran a script symlinking all the installed
>> files into /usr/local .
>>
>> Since /usr/local is not the "standard" installation path, I need to
>> run gsl-shell like so:
>>
>>  LUA_PATH='/usr/local/lib/gsl-shell/?.lua' gsl-shell
>>
>> No LUA_PATH setting is needed if running in the gsl-shell toplevel
>> source directory, and all demos/tests complete successfully there.
>
> Hi Clemens,
>
> thank you for your feedback. Talking about the LUA_PATH problem it is
> just an error in the Makefile. In attachment the patch, it will be
> added to the git repository later.
>
> Please note that the correct way to build is to set PREFIX to the
> system wide installation path (like /usr or /usr/local). DESTDIR
> should be used as a convenience for packaging. The purpose of DESTDIR
> is to let "make install" copy the files in a specific directory to
> package an archive debian or rpm.

The Makefile specifies PREFIX=/usr/local, so I didn't bother writing it
out.

Regarding the LUA_PATH issue:  I work around it by

  ln -s ../../lib/gsl-shell /usr/local/share/gsl-shell/2.0

With this there's no need for any LUA_PATH=... anymore.

I always install the "packaging way" and use a script ("symlink.sh") to
symlink/copy all the files into /usr/local.  This way I can deploy
several versions of some package and test them by changing a single
symlink in the directory pointed to by DESTDIR.

>> It is unfortunate that no documentation is installed by default, for
>> this I had to go into doc/user-manual/ and run:
>>
>>  make html man text
>>
>> after installing the python sphinx package.  The Makefile in
>> doc/user-manual/ doesn't define an "install" target, so copying the
>> files into my DESTDIR directory had to be done by hand.  A "clean"
>> target is missing as well.
>
> Actually the doc was not meant to be build and installed by the user
> but I will try to add this option. I've added also a fix for the "make
> clean" that was actually broken.

Please include a reference to package "python-sphinx" or whatever it is
called in the various OS'es distributions.

>> Did somebody try without specifying a DESTDIR make
>> variable?  Personally I want to have every user-installed package in
>> /usr/local, with symlinks pointing to each packages own installation
>> directory.
>
> This seems to be just your personal preference... :-)

Not really.  Other than FreeBSD, the other *BSD's, propably solaris and
whatnot it is used by some linux distributions to separate stuff needed
to run the system from stuff needed by users.  There are a couple of
symlink scripts to further seggragate single user-installed packages
into their own directories.  This is valuable for testing/debugging.

All this even allows to have /usr mounted readonly, which is great eg.
for security.

>> I used branch "gsl-shell-2" after your previous email.  Which branch is
>> the correct one to use?
>
> The correct branch is gsl-shell-2. The master branch points to the old
> 1.1 version.

In your other email you referred to branch "x64-build-fix".  This branch
is a dozen or so commits lagging behind "gsl-shell-2".

I'll test the patch and report back.


clemens