[kepler-dev] Kepler Installer

[Xiaowen Xin]

Hi Chad,

I don't think NSIS works on non-windows platforms.

However, I don't believe this should be a big problem.

It doesn't look like Ptolemy II has an installer for Mac OS either.

As for Linux and other Unices (which includes Mac OS X), it should be
relatively easy to write a shell script and ask the user to run it. 
Java is distributed by SUN as a shell script that has the binaries
embedded.

Alternatively, we could create RPMs for Redhat, Debs for Debian etc.

I'm not an expert on ant, but it looks like ant already has some RPM
functionality built-in according to its documentation:
http://ant.apache.org/manual/tasksoverview.html

As a Linux user, I don't think I've ever used a graphical installer to
install something before ... ;)

I'm currently trying out NSIS, and I really like it so far.  It's
script-based, so that means the installer is really transparent.  It's
not difficult for a programmer to understand the basics of what the
installer is doing by reading the script.  Also, since it's plain text,
it'll fit well in a CVS repository.  So it's easily manageable.

Xiaowen

On Thu, 2004-03-18 at 07:57, Chad Berkley wrote:
> Hi Xiaowen,
> 
> See my comments below.
> 
> Xiaowen Xin wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > Has anyone considered using NSIS from Nullsoft (maker of Winamp) to
> > create a Kepler Installer for Windows?  InstallAnywhere and
> > InstallShield both appear to be commercial products, while NSIS is
> > licensed under the GPL.  If you've installed Winamp, then you've
> > probably seen it in action.
> > 
> > http://nsis.sourceforge.net/home/ <- their homepage
> > http://nsis.sourceforge.net/users/ <- some users of NSIS
> > http://nsis.sourceforge.net/features/screenshots/ <- screenshots
> > 
> 
> Does it work for non-windows platforms?  If so, we should try it.
> 
> > It looks a lot prettier now than the Winamp installations I remember,
> > and I think it should be considered as a viable option for creating an
> > installer.
> > 
> > I did an inventory of what changes Kepler's ant install makes to the
> > Ptolemy directory on Linux.  Here are the results:
> >  
> > 1. 26 files are added to the top-level Ptolemy directory.
> > 2. kepler.jar is added to Ptolemy's lib/ directory.
> > 3. 9 xml files are added to Ptolemy's ptolemy/actor/lib/ directory.
> > 4. 6 original Ptolemy files were changed.
> > 
> > Actually the only change made to ptolemy/actor/lib/sources.xml was the
> > deletion of two newline's at the end of the file; could someone remove
> > the references to that file from build.xml?
> 
> Yeah, that was left over from the way we used to do it.  it should be 
> removed.
> 
> >  
> > The installer also replaced Ptolemy II's copyright.txt with its own. 
> > They're almost identical, but maybe it would be better to have both
> > copyright.txt's there.
> >  
> > Detailed information is at the end of the email.
> > 
> > How would you all feel about creating a kepler subdirectory and putting
> > all these files in there instead?  As it is, Ptolemy's top-level
> > directory resembles a messy room.  It's much harder to make sense of a
> > directory listing there, and to understand the directory hierarchy.  If
> > we created a subdirectory for Kepler, then it would be much easier to
> > distinguish between files installed by Kepler and ones that were part of
> > the original Ptolemy installation.
> 
> Probably a good idea.
> 
> >  
> > As far as I can tell, the only files we'd have to change to make this
> > work are the few files that were changed from the original Ptolemy ones,
> > because they're the only ones that refer to these files, so would break
> > if they changed locations.
> > 
> > Another small thing is that the build.xml file contains the line:
> >     <filter token="emlsample" value="${ptolemydir}/eml-sample.xml"/>
> > but I can't find "emlsample" anywhere else in the file, so it's probably
> > a useless line; could someone delete it?
> 
> This actually does do something.  in the eml example pipeline, the token 
> @emlsample@ is replaced with the full path to the newly copied 
> eml-sample.xml file.
> 
> chad
> 
> 
> 
> >  
> > What extra things does the installer on Windows do?  Ilkay, you've said
> > that the Windows installer creates a demo directory and a documentation
> > directory, and that there's a file called vergil.lax.  What does
> > vergil.lax do?  It's not present on Linux.  I think we should work to
> > make the installers on Linux and Windows do basically the same thing
> > because this is just plain confusing.
> > 
> > 
> > Xiaowen
> > 
> > 
> > ----------
> >  
> > Files added by Kepler:
> >  
> > backpropModel.xml
> > BrowserandWSInterfaceDemo-TRY.xml
> > classifier.xml
> > config.xml
> > DiscreteLogistic.xml
> > eml-sample.xml
> > eml-simple-plot.moml
> > garpModel.xml
> > geon_logo2.jpg
> > GEONMapHierarchicalModel.xml
> > grass-test.xml
> > HaltIteration.xml
> > kepler-index.html
> > kepler-logo2.png
> > LVPredPreyLogistic.xml
> > LVPredPrey.xml
> > model-density-gridder-dimension.xml
> > nmiworkflow-example.xml
> > PIW-full.xml
> > ptIIplanet.gif
> > queryTestDB2.xml
> > queryTest.xml
> > sample.dat
> > sdmcenter.gif
> > seeklogo.png
> > UserInterfaceDemo.xml
> >  
> > lib/kepler.jar
> >  
> > ptolemy/actor/lib/DynamicActors.xml
> > ptolemy/actor/lib/eml.xml
> > ptolemy/actor/lib/garp.xml
> > ptolemy/actor/lib/geon.xml
> > ptolemy/actor/lib/gis.xml
> > ptolemy/actor/lib/kepler.xml
> > ptolemy/actor/lib/nmiworkflow.xml
> > ptolemy/actor/lib/spa.xml
> > ptolemy/actor/lib/webservices.xml
> >  
> >  
> > Files changed by Kepler:
> >  
> > copyright.txt
> > ptolemy/actor/lib/sinks.xml
> > ptolemy/actor/lib/sources.xml
> > ptolemy/configs/basicActorLibrary.xml
> > ptolemy/configs/doc/demos.htm
> > ptolemy/configs/graphTableauFactory.xml
> > 
> > 
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> 
>