installing bzr

[John Gabriele]

On 3/22/07, John Arbash Meinel <john at arbash-meinel.com> wrote:
> John Gabriele wrote:
> > I'm not really a Python person these days, but wanted to give bzr a
> > try. I found the installation a bit disappointing, and thought you
> > might benefit from hearing about a prospective new user's experience.
> >
>
> Thanks for mentioning. In general, this is just a limitation of python's
> distutils. I feel your pain about not having an uninstall option, and
> that it is difficult to install into anywhere but $libpython/site-packages.
>
> If you have some ideas of what we could add to INSTALL to make it more
> obvious, please do so and post your results here.

I think the key is this: your new users likely know their platform,
but may not be familiar with Python. For example, Jari's suggestion
above (thanks Jari) is helpful if you don't know how to set an env var
on your platform, but I'd guess that users can consult their own
system's docs if they need to know technically how to do it. More
important is to tell your users:

``If you install bzr in a non-standard location, you'll need to tell
python how to find bzr's modules. To do this, set the PYTHONPATH
environment variable to the same string that you pass to the `--home'
option of setup.py, but with `/lib/python' appended.

For more help with installation, run `python setup.py --help' or see
the full generic module installation docs online at
<http://docs.python.org/inst/inst.html>.

Note that, at this time, there is unfortunately no uninstall command
for setup.py.

Enjoy bzr! :)''


> Almost all the files will be in opt/lib/python. The only extras that I
> know of will be 'bzr' in opt/bin.

Right. Thank you. :)

---John


> > 1. I wanted to install in my own ~/opt directory. Usually, with GNU
> > software this is done with "./configure --prefix=/home/me/opt". I read
> > the INSTALL file, and it mentioned using "python setup.py install
> > --home ~". I tried to read the docs on that, but running "./setup.py
> > --help" didn't even mention that "--home" was an option.
> >
> > So, I tried: "./setup.py install --home=/home/me/opt", and it seemed to
> > install.
> >
> > 2. I then tried running it, and it failed, telling me:
> >
> > | $ bzr help
> > | bzr: ERROR: Couldn't import bzrlib and dependencies.
> > | Please check bzrlib is on your PYTHONPATH.
> >
> > There's nothing in the INSTALL file about setting a PYTHONPATH.
> >
> > 3. I tried uninstalling, but there doesn't seem to even be an
> > uninstall target ("./setup.py --help-commands" doesn't mention
> > anything about uninstalling). So, this:
> >
> > |
> > | $ ./setup.py uninstall --home=/home/me/opt
> > |
> >
> > fails. So, it seems that the install procedure may have copied files
> > into my ~/opt without an easy way to clean them up (though, to be
> > fair, scrolling up my terminal window, it looks like they're all in
> > /home/me/opt/lib/python/bzrlib).
> >
> > Hope that's helpful,
> > ---John
> >
> >
>
>