Re: [nant-dev] Re: install targets

[Ian MacLean]

Gert Driesen wrote:
Ian,
I guess these was somehow a misunderstanding, but in the README.TXT 
you actually added a section called "Compliation and installation" in 
which you provide these instructions ..

sure - then that should probably be "Compliation and installation of a 
source distribution" with a seperate

"Installation of a binary distribution" section
or we provide seperate README's for source and binary. Previously there 
were *no* instructions at all for building - thats why I added them.

. These could easily be mistaken for instructions to install official 
releases ... 
Well - it quite clearly says "compilation" - if the official binary 
release doesn't contain source or a NAnt.build file (which it shouldn't) 
then users can hardly compile by accident can they ?

Currently, we only provide one means of "installing" NAnt (meaning 
using "make install" from the source distribution), so users are very 
likely to use that to install official distributions too (meaning 
they'll download and install the source distribution, while they 
should in fact use the binary distribution)  ...

ok - well then lets split into source and binary distros as soon as 
possible.

The current layout is already confusing. How many "I downloaded version 
x of nant but the test failed when building" emails do we get - to which 
we reply "you don't need to build - its already there". If there is no 
makefile or NAnt.build in the binary distribution then this won't happen.

So we should make it very cler that this is not the recommended way to 
install official releases of NAnt ...

of course.
Ian
Gert
----- Original Message ----- From: "Ian MacLean" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Gert Driesen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: "Nant-Developers (E-Mail)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, August 20, 2004 10:51 AM
Subject: Re: [nant-dev] Re: install targets

Gert Driesen wrote:
Ian,
After giving it some more thought, I think the "install" target of 
the makefile should install the pre-built binaries and docs for 
official NAnt distributions, not and rebuild the binaries from 
source. We went to a lot of trouble in order to have a single 
binary distribution, and I'd hate to see all that effort go to waste.

I disagree - this goes against how every other open source project 
packages their distribution.

As I said before - its a source distribution that happens to 
include pre built binaries  *not* a binary distribution.

I actually consider it to be a binary distribution that happens to 
include the source ;-)

thats the problem - right now we are a bit of both - thats what we 
need to change.

I just don't understand why I went through all the trouble to allow 
us to have a single binary distribution that can still take 
advantage of framework-specific assemblies, if we instruct users to 
build a framework specific version of NAnt.

we don't instruct them to do this -- that the point - we don't 
instruct them to do anything but quite often they *do* build it 
because there is a buildfile/make file and we never really provided 
proper installation instructions.

Quite a while ago, we did agree that we should have a single binary 
distribution that would work on all supported CLR's out-of-the-box, 
right ? And now that we have it, we'd go back to having a 
framework-specific binary install (with only very limited docs on 
linux) ... not sure I understand the reason behind this ...

no - completely incorrect. The install target is *not* a substitute 
for a binary installer. Its a convenience for when you build from 
source. Its not meant to used as the installer for an end user.

What we should have (in my opinion) is :
   - a source only distribution (containing only the binaries 
necessary to build NAnt)
   - a full binary distribution which would work on all supported 
CLR's and platforms (this would be offered as a zip file or tar)
   - an RPM release for linux
   - an installer release for Windows

These last two would also install a full binary distribution 
ofcourse ...

I totally agree. I thought thats what I basically proposed.
Also, the install targets in the NAnt build file should no longer 
depend on other build/doc targets (but they should just install 
whatever files are available in ${build.dir} (limited to bin, doc 
and examples directories). The dependency on other NAnt build 
target should be taken care of in the makefile.

why is that ? sure you'd want to install somthing thats built -- 
isn't that the point ? if you do a make install with most OSS 
projects it will build first if its not up to date.

Yes, for source distributions that is .... But users cannot always 
build a version of NAnt that is identical to what we want 
distribute, while they still expect it to be ...

sure - again we are cross purposes -- Makefile is for building from 
source, somthing else for a binary distribution.

For example :
Let's say we have an assembly that is Mono-specific.  If we 
encourage users to build NAnt from source, then users that don't 
have Mono installed will not be able to build the Mono-specific 
assembly. However, when they install Mono three later they would 
have been able to use the Mono-specific tasks however these are not 
available (without rebuilding) ....

I'm not saying that we can't have users building from source, 
ofcourse they can ... but we should not instruct them to do so ....

yes yes yes - I'm not saying we should instruct them to either -- 
hence the seperate source and binary distributions. The 
buildfile/make file should *not* be the installer for the binary only 
distribution.


Why should the dependency happen in the makefile ? Lets use NAnt 
for this - its a build tool and it handle dependencies fine.

The reason why I wanted this is to allow the install targets to be 
used from either the makefiles (to install either a freshly built 
NAnt or the pre-built binaries) or the nightly build ....

once again - the makefile should not be the installer for pre-built 
binaries IMHO.

my proposal - 2 download packages:
1) binaries only with a simple shell script to install on linux, 
batch file for windows -- hopefully installer at some stage.
2) source package that mirrors the cvs tree. Use Make install to 
build install on *nix, bin\NAnt.exe install to build install on 
windows.

This is a fairly standard packaging practice

It is because most oss project are not able to provide a single 
binary distribution that works on all supported platforms ...

thats not true - its the standard for source based distributions - 
which is what the install targets are for - a source based distro. 
The binary distro should be seperate.

- getting clever with
multiple Makefiles seems like a recipe for confision.

What's difference between multiple makefiles (one for cvs/source 
distribution and one for binary distribution), and one makefile and 
one shell script/batch file ? I don't see more or less confusion for 
any of these ... It might even better to just be able to use "make 
install" for both the source and the binary distributions ...

because a makefile is not a good substitute for an installer. Make is 
used for building things, not installing them as a general rule.

./install.sh clearly tells a user that they are installing somthing
make install looks like somthing is going to be built - which is not 
the case.

Regardless of that, users should actually use the binary release, 
not the source release ... The binaries build from source will not 
match those that are part of the binary release, this should be made 
very clear to the users ... The binaries built from source will not 
be able to run on all supported frameworks, will not be able to run 
on all supported platform, will not support all tasks ... and even 
the version number will not match that of the binary release ...

again - thats exactly what I've said. Nowhere did I say that users 
should/must build from source. The install target is a convenience 
for users who *choose* to build from source - not the de-facto 
installer. I'm not sure where you got the impression that I want to 
force people to build from source -- quite the opposite.

Ian

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Ian MacLean, Developer, 
ActiveState, a division of Sophos
http://www.ActiveState.com


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