[qmtest] running qmtest on bash in cygwin...

[Mark Mitchell]

On Sat, 2003-08-23 at 10:40, Stefan Seefeld wrote:
> Mark Mitchell wrote:
> 
> >>>The default installation would put the modules under python's site-packages,
> >>>and the rest into /usr/local/[share, bin], which is what I would expect
> >>>from a typical debian / rpm package.
> > 
> > 
> > Yes, that sounds right.
> > 
> > 
> >>>And for those who want everything in a single isolated place, an installation
> >>>using the '--home' parameter would probably do the trick. In any case, the
> > 
> > 
> > "./configure --prefix" should still have that effect.
> 
> hmm, I thought to eliminate configure, too.

That's fine, if you can make it work.

However, we don't want to assume the user is installing the binary
package on some nicely configured GNU/Linux box.

Imagine it's a HP-UX or AIX box, with no Python (or, worse, an old
broken Python) installed.  

Just getting Python *built* correctly on such a box is hard; ask Zack
about that. :-)  So, we want to distribute Python binaries along with
QMTest, and the installation procedure for the combined package should
be:

  gunzip qmtest-x.y-binary.tar.gz
  tar xvf qmtest-x.y-binary.tar

The user shouldn't have to modify their PATH, configuration files, etc.

For example, that's why we don't just want to pick the Python in the
user's path.  There's a good chance the Python in the user's path is
broken, old, or wrong in this situation.  The "find the Python next to
QMTest" trick in qm.sh is designed precisely for this case.

It would be fine to make using that trick optional (so that on a nicely
set up Debian box it wasn't necessary, for example), but we can't
eliminate it -- unless somebody can come up with a better plan.

> > The high-level concept is that while we'd like QMTest to play better
> > with Python, we want to keep it usable as an independent application as
> > well.
> 
> independent in the sense that it is bundled together with a python distro
> such that there are no external dependencies ?

Correct.

> How do you package python then ? It sounds all you need for this case
> is an installer that first unpacks python at a specific place and then
> calls the python binary with the 'setup.py' script that is part of the
> QMTest distribution.

It's possible that could work.  

If there were one more step added to the installation procedure above,
like, say:

  qmtest-x.y/bin/python qmtest-x.y/share/setup.py

That would be OK.

We're not particular about how exactly this works, but it must work in
such a way that a newbie user/sysadmin can easily get QMTest installed.

It's like those Apple adds for the I-mac -- "There is no step 3." :-)

-- 
Mark Mitchell
CodeSourcery, LLC
mark at codesourcery.com