[Koha-devel] Installer for 2.3

[MJ Ray]

For All Koha Hackers:
* A new installer is in development.
* The start is already in CVS. It doesn't work yet.
* I've read old koha-devel posts and I've looked at other projects,
so I think I see at least some of the pitfalls.
* If you think I will break your code, please warn me now.
* I aim to have this working well by the end of August.

For Joshua:
I've added myself to the 3.0 roadmap. Hope that's OK.

For Installer Hackers:

Following the installer meeting, I've taken a look at the
ExtUtils::MakeMaker and ExtUtils::MakeMaker::Tutorial man
pages, as well as some other articles and it looks like this
is a reasonable way to go and it might work for koha. I think
particularly interesting items on the main man page are:

 NAME, DISTNAME, VERSION (which are fairly obvious)
 PREREQS_PM (our dependencies)
 CONFIGURE (which might do the autodetection and Q&A if wanted)
 PM (what installs where) and
 PL_FILES (scripts that write files, perhaps autodetecting)

I have started the ball rolling by adding Makefile.PL to the CVS
HEAD. I have also removed some other files (Makefile Make.conf.in
C4/Makefile.PL C4/MANIFEST) which seemed to be in the way.

My next step is to use buildrelease and Install.pm to determine
which files in the source tree belong where in the installed tree
and write that into the Makefile.PL - at the moment, this will
make the Makefile.PL very very big, mainly because of translated
templates. I'd rather pack one set of templates and the po files,
but which set? I'll do this this week, one way or another.

Some other suggested/possible next steps are on a KohaInstaller
roadmap at http://www.koha.org/wiki/?page=KohaInstaller - These
are ideas and I don't have all the knowledge to decide whether
they're possible: if you know more about one or have more ideas,
please send comments to the list. If you can do one of the steps
already mentioned, please do it and announce it on that page.
Until the code is in CVS (or your patch is sent to this list),
just hack the installer as you want. I ain't proud.

Ultimately, this looks like it might remove buildrelease,
installer.pl, Install.pm and possibly some other helper scripts.
(What happens to koha.upgrade? An interesting question.)
The payoff should be a simpler and more portable installer which
is easier to package for every operating system distribution.

-- 
MJ Ray (slef), K. Lynn, England, email see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/
http://www.ttllp.co.uk/koha/