With Ubuntu and other Linuxes you could package the distribution inside DEB/RPM etc. which would install Taverna (and dependencies) through the system standard installers that the users will already be used to if they've ever had to install any other software on their machine. That way you could specify dependencies (in most Linuxes, including Ubuntu, you can specify Sun Java as a dependency as opposed to the standard system one) so that when Taverna is started (e.g. by typing "taverna2" from a command-line, it having been installed into /usr/local/bin/ or wherever by the RPM etc. thus being on the PATH) the user knows it will Just Work TM.
Doing it this way you could even include menu definition files that conform to the GTK and KDE standards, thus making Taverna appear in the Applications Menu (Ubuntu), Kicker (KDE), etc. - this way the command-line can be removed from the process altogether. I realise that providing several different packages for each release is time-consuming from the developer end (probably a day, maybe two, to build and test the complete set of packages each time, once an efficient procedure has been established?) but from the end-user point of view it makes the software product much more user-friendly. cheers, Richard On Thu, 2009-06-11 at 09:18 +0100, Stian Soiland-Reyes wrote: > On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 08:50, Stian > Soiland-Reyes<[email protected]> wrote: > > > It is however Windows users that have the biggest issue of not having > > Java by default. > > As a summary for newcomers to the thread - the question is how do you > make installation and first start-up of Taverna work, even if the user > don't have Java installed on their machine. > > In Windows what happens now if you don't have Java is that you click > run.bat - a black window appears, and after less than a second it > closes again - not very helpful, unfortunately. > > > Our main challenge is that as Taverna is a Java program, we can't just > "pop up a window if Java is missing" before we are up and running in > Java. > > You could crudely put PAUSE and ECHO and something in the .BAT file so > that it doesn't just exit, with some kind of line saying 'You don't > seem to have Java installed - see http://blablabla' - but it's not > very user friendly (but still an improvement!) - for example the user > can't click on the link in the console window. > > You could execute a visual basic script that can pop up a dialogue > window and stuff - I guess all recent Windowses comes with Visual > Basic installed now. > > > There are also startup wrapper tools like Launch4J Richard is > mentioning for Windows, which is a standard Windows binary that can > detect if Java is installed or not, and then direct the user to an > appropriate download site. > > > > For Linux I'm not quite sure what is appropriate, currently we use a > shell script, but as Linux is becoming more user-friendly less people > are used to digg down in a Terminal to start applications. Also some > distributions like Ubuntu, come with Java, but it's a .. how can I put > it nicely.. incomplete implementation. The users would still need to > install Sun Java 5 or 6 to run Taverna successfully. > > > Our plan is to release Taverna 2.1 beta 2 in a few weeks time, which > functionally will be quite similar to beta 1, but with an appropriate > installation procedure for Windows and downloads for different > platforms, including an application bundle for OS X. > > -- Richard Holland, BSc MBCS Finance Director, Eagle Genomics Ltd T: +44 (0)1223 654481 ext 3 | E: [email protected] http://www.eaglegenomics.com/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Crystal Reports - New Free Runtime and 30 Day Trial Check out the new simplified licensing option that enables unlimited royalty-free distribution of the report engine for externally facing server and web deployment. http://p.sf.net/sfu/businessobjects _______________________________________________ taverna-hackers mailing list [email protected] Web site: http://www.taverna.org.uk Mailing lists: http://www.taverna.org.uk/taverna-mailing-lists/ Developers Guide: http://www.mygrid.org.uk/tools/developer-information
