Why the heck would you
want a Linux binary installer that
works like a Windows binary installer? Yuck! Linux has something
much better - packages! For Linux, what OpenACS needs isn't
some silly pointy-clicky GUI binary installer, but rather:
- Source rpm and deb packages for all OpenACS dependencies,
all OpenACS core packages, and each non-core OpenACS package.
- Compiled binary packages of the above for some of the more popular
Linux distrubitions.
- An OpenACS package repository for use with both apt-get (on both
Debian and rpm distros) and yum (for rpm distros), preferably all
hosted at one place. (On a packages.openacs.org server, or something
like that).
- Clear instructions on how to point apt-get or yum at the above
repositories and install everything you need for OpenACS. (With the
above work done right, this should be very easy, just adding
a line or two to one config file, and running one or two commands
along the lines of, "apt-get install openacs".)
- Optionally, where various Linux package repositories include stock
components suitable for use with OpenACS, clear and concise pointers
to those as well.
Just yesterday Bart contributed a whole bunch of
source rpms
which make a good dent in the above list of tasks. Many others have
also made similar efforts in the past, but to-date they have been
one-off one man efforts which have never pushed through to the full
solution above, and which haven't been taken up and fully integrated
by the rest of the OpenACS community.
There is no doubt additional related work that would be needed to
faciliate the stuff above and/or really leverage it once it's built,
but I am convinced that the above is at least roughly the right
approach.
Basically 80+% of the difficulty and hassle in installing OpenACS has
nothing to do with OpenACS per-se, but is due solely to installing the
required software stack. And the repository of Linux packages
described above will make all of that software stack
difficulty just go away! Then all that is left for the brand new
OpenACS user/admin to do is:
- Creat and initialize a database (for your already installed RDBMS
software).
- Configure an AOLserver instance (using the already installed
AOLserver software).
- Initialize your OpenACS system via the web browser (using the
already installed OpenACS files).
Those tasks are pretty easy, are already covered adequately in the
current OpenACS docs, will get even easier once they can assume use of
all the Linux packages above, and most likely, could also be further
automated via the Linux package systems if people end up wanting that.
