>From a newcomer's perspective, there are number of pitfalls that makes it difficult to run S2graph. For instance, the only way for an outsider to run s2graph is to do via Vagrant as the README says. However:
- JDK 7 compiler (in the vagrant image) fails because the codebase now uses JDK 8 features (e.g. java.util.Base64) - To properly run the database we have to run HDFS and HBase services, which is inconvenient and not documented anywhere - "sbt run" requires a nontrivial time to resolve all the dependencies and building. Because sbt compiles the project files upon the first HTTP request, the user experience of laggy first page is not very ideal. I suppose one way to lower the entry barrier and make this project user-friendly is to make a release package, so that first-comers can just download and unzip the package, and run the script in any unix-like environment. Tools like Vagrant (or docker, puppet, chef, whatnot) are convenient for developers, but not so much for end-users. One prerequisite for doing this is to make the package self-contained, so that users are not required to set up any dependencies, where currently MySQL and HBase are the main hassle. I think we can make the S2graph package self-contained by doing the followings: - Since hbase-server project is already in the dependency (why?), with a few configuration scripts we should be able to run the HBase server using the local filesystem without incurring an enormous space requirement. - With a minimal modification to scalikejdbc codes, we should be able to avoid using MySQL in favor of an embedded or in-memory database like derby/h2. We could follow what Play! framework does <https://github.com/playframework/playframework/tree/master/framework/src/sbt-plugin/src/sbt-test/play-sbt-plugin/distribution> and make an SBT plugin that makes the package , or make a custom script that assembles all jars and makes the directory layout for the distribution package like Apache Spark does <https://github.com/apache/spark/blob/master/dev/make-distribution.sh>. I'm willing to go ahead and start working on this distribution packaging, let me know what you guys think. Jong Wook
