On Wed, 6 May 2020 00:45:22 -0700 (PDT), "'B. Wilson' via Metamath" <[email protected]> wrote: > There also seems to be some tension about installation expectations. Some > people like the fact that metamath Just Works by downloading and extracting > an archive to wherever. Others, like myself, seem to prefer that metamath > Just Works by installing it like any other program on your platform. > > Upstream build and distribution burden notwithstanding, it seems like both > of these installation methods are mutually compatible.
Agreed. It shouldn't be any harder than it is currently to download a zipfile/tarball, do compiling/configuration, and run. Ideally easier. But it's very rare for people to install software that way any more. Software is usually installed today as packages unless you plan to modify the program. I think you have a good point that we should be following *current* packaging standards. We'd have to do some more work on the software to truly follow them, but it would make it easier for new users. It might be best to think about what it would look like in the end. Users could simply use their browser, click on "install Metamath-exe" and "install mmj2", and the respective software would be fully installed. They can separately download a database, e.g., "set.mm". They can then use their list of applications (e.g., "Start" Menu) to run the program, which would be able to easily load whatever database they'd like. Here are the kind of changes needed for that: * Metamath-exe: Its autoconfig files already meet the requirements for POSIX; we just need to document how to install it with them. We'd also need to add a .desktop file for POSIX, but that's trivial. Ideally someone would directly create packages for systems like Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, and then either get the packages into their repos *OR* create a Metamath repo. Metamath doesn't provide a Windows installer; it might not be too hard to use NSIS to create a .msi installer. * mmj2: It doesn't currently meet POSIX install standards. I can autoconfiscate it to do that. It needs a .desktop file (easy). Its instructions need an update. Packaging it for Windows might be trickier, but as long as we require installing Java *separately* it wouldn't be too bad. --- David A. Wheeler -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Metamath" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/metamath/E1jWNX2-00014v-Uh%40rmmprod06.runbox.
