First a couple of general thoughts on this:
1. we are still working through the process of establishing policies
and procedures for community supported binary releases, and we
haven't done a binary release in years (but will hopefully get a
branch going soon, and a stable version of that branch in a couple of
months)
2. my guess as to why this doesn't exist already is that Apache OFBiz
is server-side software and such installers are not as common for
this sort of thing (yes, they do of course exist); there are SO SO SO
many configuration options that an automated install would have to be
a huge piece of software, or address a simple case, like a demo/test
install
That said, and to follow up on Chris's reply to this with the install
steps, the installation of OFBiz is super-easy OOTB, especially for a
binary build which would look like this:
1. make sure you have Sun Java 1.4 or 1.5 (JDK, not just JRE) installed
2. download OFBiz binary build, and unzip to a directory
3. go into that directory and run the executable jar file
(ofbiz.jar), or one of the startup scripts
And that's IT, PERIOD. Installing Ant is not necessary because OFBiz
includes the libraries and a script for that. A build from SVN
procedure is almost as easy:
1. make sure you have Sun Java 1.4 or 1.5 (JDK, not just JRE) installed
2. make sure you have an SVN client installed
3. with the SVN client, checkout http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/
ofbiz/trunk in a new directory
4. go into that directory run "ant run-install", or in Linux/Unix "./
ant run-install"
5. still in that directory run the executable jar file (ofbiz.jar),
or one of the startup scripts
If that's too complex for a server side application demo/test
install, I don't know what to say... or how much more we can really
do about it. What else would an automated install do? I guess it
could check the one and only dependency there is: the JDK
installation. That is where most people run into problems. The best
way to avoid that: use a Mac. ;)
Seriously though, this world is quite #$%^ed up and there are so many
different variations in operating systems, versions of Java (OFBiz
does NOT work with gcj and other such things), and so on that I don't
know that we can do a lot in this area. Say we chose a version of
Linux to support: now people have to install THAT version of Linux in
order to easily use OFBiz... hmmm...
Still, if someone wanted to work on this, I certainly wouldn't
complain... ;)
-David
On Jan 2, 2007, at 9:04 AM, Andrew Ballantine wrote:
Walter Vaughan wrote:
"As a strategy, that's an excellent idea. Curing world hunger is
another,
but
executing is another thing."
Well, you can choose to make facetious remarks if you must, but I
consider
this very important.
If you look back over the user mailing list you will find it
littered with
requests for help just getting ofbiz up and running. I would bet
that a lot
of them loose interest fairly quickly and we loose a potential
user/contributor. Since no one can evaluate the framework without
getting it
working, that makes it very important that new users get a really
painless
and easy automated installation process.
About 2 years ago I was evaluating ofbiz and used the Windows
install that
was available then. It wasn't completely automated or that easy,
but I got
through it. I tried the same thing in Linux, because the final
production
system must run on Linux, and got totally bogged down.
I know that the history of Open Source has tended not to provide easy
installation procedures or documentation, but the trend is
changing. You
will find that many of the projects that support multiple operating
systems
have excellent automated installation procedures. OK it needs a bit of
effort to set up, but once done it should be easy to maintain and keep
working.
I deliberately specified ONLY one Linux distribution, Ubuntu 6.06
LTS, to
simplify the job and chose a distribution with a 5 year support plan.
I have to confess that I have looked at other ERP Open Source
projects to
see if I could find one that was easier to use than ofbiz. I am
sorry if
this hurts, but it is true. However I keep coming back to ofbiz
because of
its excellent architecture and true open source community.
I think it essential that the new user be at least accorded a decent
automated install process to avoid loosing them at the first hurdle. I
primarily want to USE the framework to drive my client's business
processes
and then contribute any patches that I feel are needed to improve the
framework. I do not want to spend hours or days fiddling about with
all
sorts of things just to get the thing working without producing error
messages all over the place.
We also should remember that newcomers to Open Source are also new
to Linux
which only adds to the learning curve. Faced with a huge learning
curve
there is a strong tendency to give up and stick with the trash we
have grown
to hate e.g. Microsoft.
Is it really so difficult to create two automated install
procedure? I would
like to see a single executable download file which will then do
everything
that is needed to install a running ofbiz framework. That includes
installing the correct versions of any products needed to support the
installation e.g. Java Ant Postgres etc
I am interested in helping put together such procedures given some
help from
your good selves.
Kind regards,
Andrew Ballantine.
-----Original Message-----
From: Walter Vaughan [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: 02 January 2007 13:30
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Community supported releases WAS [Re: Properly edited
OFBiz
manuals]
Andrew Ballantine wrote:
I second all of that and would like to add a request that each new
release
provides an automated installation procedure on MS Windows and one
flavour
of Linux, say Ubuntu 6.06.
As a strategy, that's an excellent idea. Curing world hunger is
another, but
executing is another thing.
Where we have a failure as a community right now it the document we
have at
http://incubator.apache.org/ofbiz/docs/GettingAndUsingOFBiz.pdf
which probably is an old version, with incorrect links
(it points to http://svn.ofbiz.org/ which tosses a 403 error page),
(it points to
http://docs.ofbiz.org/display/OFBTECH/OFBiz+Technical+Production
+Setup+Guide
which needs a little more hand holding, and as well points to
http://svn.ofbiz.org/ which tosses a 403 error page),
(it points to http://www.sequoiaerp.org/ which hasn't been around
in 10
months).
This page is slightly better
http://incubator.apache.org/ofbiz/docs/setup.html
but it sill suffers from non-linear thought process
As soon as the dust settles on getting us out of the "incubator" I am
completely
confident we'll have bulletproof installation, startup, and next
step guides
in
place.
--
Walter
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