Hi Peter, On 5/11/2011 1:49 PM, Peter Dietz wrote: > But, for developing DSpace, and people that build from source (since > they've got their own modifications to make), mvn + ant are excellent > tools to do that. For everyone who doesn't quite get maven, then we > should have easy to follow docs that say in plain english/i18n edit: > /opt/dspace/pom.xml and at line 503, edit the <modules> directive and > add an additional entry for <module>../rest</module>. And have the rest > project checked out to /opt/rest, then proceed as usual (mvn ... ant ... > tomcat).
I can definitely see you point about also improving documentation. But as DSpace is now nearly 9 years old and we still haven't found "easy enough" documentation, I'm not sure I'm in full agreement that we'll ever be able to provide clear enough documentation for everyone. In addition, the main reason for this idea of an "easy installer" was to try and free up more of our Committer/developer time. If you notice, we still receive a ton of dspace-tech questions regarding installation problems (e.g. "Maven error", "Ant error", "problem compiling", "Why am I getting this weird error when I follow the Install instructions?"). The goal is to try and see if there's a way to build a more "automated" installation such that we don't receive quite so many install questions from novice users or folks who just want to try out DSpace on their local server. Obviously we should also be sure to provide clear install docs. But we really shouldn't require everyone to compile DSpace for themselves (unless they really want or need to). How much of the software you use daily asks you to first compile it before you install it? Even other IR software (Fedora, EPrints) comes with an Easy Installer option (EPrints even offers 'rpm' and 'deb' options for extremely quick Linux based installs). So, in my mind, it's *easier* for us to maintain a single "Easy Installer", than to maintain N*M combinations of "easy how-to" docs, where N = number of versions of DSpace, and M = number of unique system setups (OS, DB, etc). I still agree we should strive to provide "easy how-to" documentation, where we can. But, wouldn't it be nice if we could just say: "Don't want/need to compile DSpace for yourself? Just go run this installer, it will ask you all the questions (in plain english/i18n) that you need to answer to get up-and-running, and then just start up your Tomcat." - Tim ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Achieve unprecedented app performance and reliability What every C/C++ and Fortran developer should know. Learn how Intel has extended the reach of its next-generation tools to help boost performance applications - inlcuding clusters. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-dev2devmay _______________________________________________ Dspace-devel mailing list Dspace-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/dspace-devel
