[GRASS5] discussion on how to package binaries
Michael Barton
michael.barton at asu.edu
Fri Mar 5 18:22:33 EST 2004
Fellow GRASS users
Markus Neteler, Scott Mitchell, and I exchanged several emails over how
to package and distribute Mac binaries for GRASS. This discussion
raises some interesting issues and questions for the GRASS user
community. Markus suggested that it would be good to involve more
people in the discussion, and both Scott and I agree. I am forwarding
some of the more general commentary as a starting point in the
discussion. (which began with Scott and Markus making arrangements on
posting Scott's recently compiled Mac binaries for GRASS 5.3, and a
note on the new package of binaries posted by Lorenzo Moretti). All
these are worthy and supportable efforts. The discussion is over how to
most effectively package, post, and distribute GRASS.
Sorry for the length. We had already written quite a bit for a Friday
when we realized that we were discussing a larger issue than posting a
file and could benefit from a broader discussion. Maybe interested
folks can take it home and read it over the weekend.
Michael Barton
______________________________
Michael Barton, Professor & Curator
Department of Anthropology
Arizona State University
Tempe, AZ 85287-2402
USA
voice: 480-965-6262; fax: 480-965-7671
-messages in reverse chronological order
> From: Scott Mitchell <smitch at mac.com>
> Date: Fri Mar 5, 2004 10:02:23 AM America/Phoenix
> To: Markus Neteler <neteler at itc.it>
> Cc: "Kirk R. Wythers" <kwythers at umn.edu>, Michael Barton
> <michael.barton at asu.edu>
> Subject: Re: uploading your binaries
>
>
> Just quick replies, as I really should do some other work for a
> while...
>
> (1) The alternate location of Lorenzo's build should not matter, and I
> see your point of it being familiar to users. I used alternative
> locations for GRASS for years on some Suns I used to take care of, and
> never had a problem. Just needs to be built with the paths specified.
>
> (2) Making an up to date fink package would be yet another relatively
> painless way to install. Something I'd love to investigate some day
> but so far no time.
>
> (3) I know that on some web sites I have seen that the Apple .pkg way
> of installing things is a big security hole, and some knowledgeable
> people will refuse to install anything distributed by anyone besides
> Apple in this format as a result. I don't know any details, but I can
> see that as one reason why alternate formats are always good. On the
> other hand, your discussions of the attraction of one double clickable
> file for the majority of users is quite valid.
>
> (4) I am working on cleaning up the Mac help page now to deal with
> some of all this confusion and will try to keep on top of that. Will
> also take a look at the README files in the new download directory
> structure.
>
> Cheers,
> Scott
>
> From: Markus Neteler <neteler at itc.it>
> Date: Fri Mar 5, 2004 9:54:10 AM America/Phoenix
> To: Michael Barton <michael.barton at asu.edu>
> Cc: Scott Mitchell <smitch at mac.com>, "Kirk R. Wythers"
> <kwythers at umn.edu>
> Subject: Re: uploading your binaries
>
> On Fri, Mar 05, 2004 at 09:39:11AM -0700, Michael Barton wrote:
>> I looked at Lorenzo's site Wednesday and Thursday, before it went
>> down,
>> and emailed him for some clarifications.
>>
>> Here is what it looks like AFAICT. I have not yet downloaded it. I
>> went
>> to do so yesterday and the site was down. When I looked at it a few
>> hours earlier, it is very well documented.
>
> A colleague at University here told me, that he was
> able to install it in 5 minutes. Sounds like the right
> direction.
>
>> He has a *.pkg installation of GRASS 5.3, GRASS 5.7, the Spearfish
>> sample data set, and PostgreSQL. The GRASS installation includes all
>> the needed files to run grass (tcltk, gdal, proj, and a couple others)
>> except X11. It is in a Standard Mac OSX *.pkg format. That is,
>> installation requires only double-clicking the *.pkg file on the Mac
>> desktop. The only thing I can see that is non-standard is that he
>> installs it into the /Applications directory. This is where the Mac
>> wants to put all applications. All Aqua things go there and a few X11
>> apps have started showing up there. I don't know what the implications
>> of this might be for using GRASS (maybe none if it is compiled
>> correctly for this location???). BTW, Fink installs it in /sw/shared
>> which is really non-standard.
>>
>> For myself, this is the direction I personally think GRASS needs to go
>> to make it accessible to a wider GIS audience. However, I don't
>> know...
>>
>> 1) whether or not Lorenzo's package wor--especially tcltk (At least
>> one
>> student here did download it and is planning to install it. So maybe
>> we'll see.)
>>
>> 2) what the implications are to the non-standard installation
>> location.
>> The same package procedure could be used to put GRASS in /usr/local.
>>
>> The downside of the standard location is that it is by default hidden
>> on the Mac, while /Applications is not. Also, you cannot make any
>> changes to /usr/local without root access (i.e., I have to use sudo to
>> do anything there). At least I think those are disadvantages.
>
> Maybe this should be discussed in 'grass5'?
>
>> FWIW, I would vote (with Scott I think) to provide a link to Lorenzo's
>> site to see how it goes for now
>
> The link is there for some weeks.
>
>> and put a new 'standard' binary up on
>> the main GRASS site.
>
> Now also there. Maybe the link should be mentioned as
> well in the new 5.3 Mac README in the binary directory.
>
>> However, I think in the future, we should try to
>> move away from an installation that requires users to open a terminal
>> window and call a shell script, then do a similar or even more complex
>> installation of libraries needed get GRASS to run. While it seems fine
>> to make this kind of custom installation available to those who want
>> to
>> do it, I personally can't see any reasons to require it of the
>> majority
>> of GRASS users.
>
> I would appreciate to see .deb, .rpm for Debian, Redhat, Suse,
> Mandrake.
> But nobody wants to contribute... That's why we still have the
> script solution.
>
>> It seems to me that the eventual goal of distributing GRASS is to make
>> an excellent piece of software available to people who need to use
>> GIS.
>> In trying to use GRASS in my graduate class this Spring, about half
>> the
>> students who initially wanted to use it gave up after fighting with
>> installation difficulties.
>
> I can imagine... :-(
>
>> Those that persisted and made it through the
>> installation have been very happy with GRASS (except one guy who has a
>> Windows 98 workstation). It seems that an installation that filters
>> out
>> 50% of the potential users is problematic.
>
> Maybe like that:
>
> - 50% installation problems
> - 30% launching GRASS the *first* time
> - 20% all other problems
>
> An unfortunate proportion, definitely the 50% installation troubles
> should be eliminated. People just want (!) to click, at least
> for installation. So with RPMs etc it were fine, but if not provided...
>
>> Well that's probably far too much pontificating on my part ;-) I did
>> want to put in my 2 cents worth (I guess that's 1.5 cents given the
>> value of the dollar against the Euro now).
>
> I'm already looking forward the new tcltkgrass!
>
>> I also can't offer enough appreciation to you folks who have kept this
>> project alive and kicking into the 21st Century.
>
> Hope we don't kick it out of space (let's assume it's not flat).
>
> Thanks
>
> Markus
>
Markus
Begin forwarded message:
> From: Michael Barton <michael.barton at asu.edu>
> Date: Fri Mar 5, 2004 9:39:11 AM America/Phoenix
> To: Scott Mitchell <smitch at mac.com>
> Cc: Markus Neteler <neteler at itc.it>, "Kirk R. Wythers"
> <kwythers at umn.edu>
> Subject: Re: uploading your binaries
>
> I looked at Lorenzo's site Wednesday and Thursday, before it went
> down, and emailed him for some clarifications.
>
> Here is what it looks like AFAICT. I have not yet downloaded it. I
> went to do so yesterday and the site was down. When I looked at it a
> few hours earlier, it is very well documented.
>
> He has a *.pkg installation of GRASS 5.3, GRASS 5.7, the Spearfish
> sample data set, and PostgreSQL. The GRASS installation includes all
> the needed files to run grass (tcltk, gdal, proj, and a couple others)
> except X11. It is in a Standard Mac OSX *.pkg format. That is,
> installation requires only double-clicking the *.pkg file on the Mac
> desktop. The only thing I can see that is non-standard is that he
> installs it into the /Applications directory. This is where the Mac
> wants to put all applications. All Aqua things go there and a few X11
> apps have started showing up there. I don't know what the implications
> of this might be for using GRASS (maybe none if it is compiled
> correctly for this location???). BTW, Fink installs it in /sw/shared
> which is really non-standard.
>
> For myself, this is the direction I personally think GRASS needs to go
> to make it accessible to a wider GIS audience. However, I don't > know...
>
> 1) whether or not Lorenzo's package wor--especially tcltk (At least
> one student here did download it and is planning to install it. So
> maybe we'll see.)
>
> 2) what the implications are to the non-standard installation
> location. The same package procedure could be used to put GRASS in
> /usr/local.
>
> The downside of the standard location is that it is by default hidden
> on the Mac, while /Applications is not. Also, you cannot make any
> changes to /usr/local without root access (i.e., I have to use sudo to
> do anything there). At least I think those are disadvantages.
>
> FWIW, I would vote (with Scott I think) to provide a link to Lorenzo's
> site to see how it goes for now and put a new 'standard' binary up on
> the main GRASS site. However, I think in the future, we should try to
> move away from an installation that requires users to open a terminal
> window and call a shell script, then do a similar or even more complex
> installation of libraries needed get GRASS to run. While it seems fine
> to make this kind of custom installation available to those who want
> to do it, I personally can't see any reasons to require it of the
> majority of GRASS users.
>
> It seems to me that the eventual goal of distributing GRASS is to make
> an excellent piece of software available to people who need to use
> GIS. In trying to use GRASS in my graduate class this Spring, about
> half the students who initially wanted to use it gave up after
> fighting with installation difficulties. Those that persisted and made
> it through the installation have been very happy with GRASS (except
> one guy who has a Windows 98 workstation). It seems that an
> installation that filters out 50% of the potential users is
> problematic.
>
> Well that's probably far too much pontificating on my part ;-) I did
> want to put in my 2 cents worth (I guess that's 1.5 cents given the
> value of the dollar against the Euro now).
>
> I also can't offer enough appreciation to you folks who have kept this
> project alive and kicking into the 21st Century.
>
> Cheers,
> Michael
>
>
>
> On Friday, March 5, 2004, at 09:04 AM, Scott Mitchell wrote:
>
>> Sure, and I wanted to double check before writing it because the bit
>> about not being able to install where you want may have changed with
>> his latest release, but as you found, his site is currently down.
>> The basic idea is still the same...
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Scott
>>
>> On 5-Mar-04, at 10:57, Markus Neteler wrote:
>>
>>>> installed with as close as possible the same procedure as other
>>>> binary
>>>> releases from the official sites.
>>>
>>> OK, I wasn't aware that Lorenzo is including so much stuff (I didn't
>>> check).
>>>
>> ------
>> Scott W. Mitchell Scott_Mitchell at carleton.ca
>> Department of Geography and Environmental Studies
>> Carleton University, B349 Loeb Building (Office A209)
>> 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, ON Canada K1S 5B6
>> +1-613-520-2600 ext 2695 Fax: 1-613-520-4301
>>
>>
>>
> ______________________________
> Michael Barton, Professor & Curator
> Department of Anthropology
> Arizona State University
> Tempe, AZ 85287-2402
> USA
>
> voice: 480-965-6262; fax: 480-965-7671
>
>
> From: Scott Mitchell <smitch at mac.com>
> Date: Fri Mar 5, 2004 8:54:06 AM America/Phoenix
> To: Markus Neteler <neteler at itc.it>
> Cc: "Kirk R. Wythers" <kwythers at umn.edu>, Michael Barton
> <michael.barton at asu.edu>
> Subject: Re: uploading your binaries
>
>
> My only concern with Lorenzo's solution is that it is not "standard",
> in that (1) it includes all sorts of other packages, and (2) it forces
> files to install into particular locations. I am quite happy that he
> has done the work, and intend to link to it from our pages, but I'm
> hoping to also have an "official" binary release that is as made and
> installed with as close as possible the same procedure as other binary
> releases from the official sites.
>
> So I was thinking we could have the one in the "normal" location which
> required fink (or alternatives, for the more advanced users), and I
> have been working on another "cleaner" one which will hopefully get
> rid of the fink dependency as well (which could either be on the GRASS
> site or be pointed to elsewhere), and ALSO our page of explanations
> with pointers to alternative solutions.
>
> I am quite willing to be swayed into alternative arrangements, but
> this seemed to be closest to the way other platforms are handled, and
> true to the sentiments raised on the list recently, especially by
> Glynn, about distributing as little that is not GRASS itself as
> possible.
>
> Reasonable?
> Scott
>
> On 5-Mar-04, at 10:35, Markus Neteler wrote:
>
>> Scott,
>>
>> I'm of course willing to move the binaries from incoming/ into
>> the web space. But AFAIK the Mac binaries from L. from Bologna
>> (recently announced in grassuser) do not need FINK.
>>
>> I am a bit confused with all these versions around.
>> What should I do?
>>
>> Here the link:
>> http://wwwamb.bologna.enea.it/forgrass/
>>
>> (maybe he has 5.7 only, cannot open the site at time)
>>
>> Thanks for clarifications,
>> (sorry for my Mac-ignorance)
>>
>> Markus
>>
>> On Wed, Mar 03, 2004 at 10:40:17AM -0500, Scott Mitchell wrote:
>>>
>>> Ok, I have a binary dist built of GRASS5.3-cvs that works for me, it
>>> has libgdal 1.2.0 included, compiled on a "Panther" (OS 10.3.2)
>>> machine. It tests fine on a "Jaguar" machine (10.2.6?), too, but
>>> I've
>>> confirmed that it still requires fink.
>>>
>>> I'm uploading this now to grass.itc.it, 3 files (the usual two plus a
>>> README), and they are also available under
>>> http://bouteloua.erin.utoronto.ca/~smitch/
>>>
>>> Markus, when they're uploaded, can you please put them in the Mac
>>> binaries area? I will also make sure there are some files in there
>>> explaining the requirements.
>>>
>>> I've been working on getting an even more portable version that
>>> wouldn't require fink... as you may have seen on the list, we should
>>> be
>>> able to get around the Tcl/Tk problem by either embedding it in the
>>> GRASS distribution or by distributing a separate tarball to install,
>>> but I found in my testing that getting rid of that dependency just
>>> exposed another - when I "hide" fink on my system, GRASS can't start
>>> because the version of another library (curses) that it finds in the
>>> system directory doesn't match the version it was compiled against
>>> (from fink). So I'll have to try keeping fink "more out of the
>>> picture" for the compilations, but this will take more time and
>>> experimentation.
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> Scott
>>>
>>> On 2-Mar-04, at 13:11, Michael Barton wrote:
>>>
>>>> Scott,
>>>>
>>>> Do you have any idea where to get a packaged version of tcltk that
>>>> we
>>>> could include in a Mac OSX package to avoid having to upload fink
>>>> (as
>>>> much as I like fink)?
>>>>
>>>> Michael
>>>>
>>>> On Tuesday, March 2, 2004, at 11:04 AM, Scott Mitchell wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> The version I now have should be at least clean from the
>>>>> internationalization library, and now I also have some on my
>>>>> portable
>>>>> that are compiled against GDAL1.2.0 ... so I guess it would make
>>>>> sense for me to upload those ones, after the class I'm just now
>>>>> heading out to teach. I'm not sure how big the change is in GDAL,
>>>>> but vaguely recall a list message from Markus advising someone to
>>>>> use
>>>>> it, so there may be something important.
>>>>>
>>>>> Cheers,
>>>>> Scott
>>>>>
>>>>> On 2-Mar-04, at 12:54, Michael Barton wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Scott,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I agree with you on all points. What do you think? Should I upload
>>>>>> the binaries I now have from you (along with a note saying that
>>>>>> you
>>>>>> need a Fink library and tcltk) or wait until you do your 'clean'
>>>>>> binaries?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Michael
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Monday, March 1, 2004, at 06:55 PM, Scott Mitchell wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> From: Scott Mitchell <smitch at mac.com>
>>>>>>> Date: Mon Mar 1, 2004 6:55:30 PM America/Phoenix
>>>>>>> To: Michael Barton <michael.barton at asu.edu>
>>>>>>> Subject: Re: uploading your binaries
>>>>>>> Attachments: There is 1 attachment
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Yeah, I have done that in the past, it works OK - I uploaded some
>>>>>>> 5.0.2 binaries at one point. At the time, Markus asked that at
>>>>>>> least one other person confirm that they work before uploading -
>>>>>>> seems like a good procedure. Because the upload server doesn't
>>>>>>> let
>>>>>>> you see the directory that you're uploading to, you have to keep
>>>>>>> track of which files are already uploaded when dealing with more
>>>>>>> than one - it doesn't let you overwrite. This probably won't be
>>>>>>> an
>>>>>>> issue any more, I suppose - it was then because the same file
>>>>>>> name
>>>>>>> was used for different versions of the binary tar files and
>>>>>>> script
>>>>>>> files but now for >5.3.x the release info and platform both get
>>>>>>> into the names of both files.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I agree with Paul Kelly that it's important to carefully building
>>>>>>> them according to the instructions, and document exceptions -
>>>>>>> that
>>>>>>> helps get the best help when portability issues do arise. I
>>>>>>> actually built a new bindist of 5.3 on OS X last weekend, paying
>>>>>>> attention to some of the recent notes on shared libraries, and
>>>>>>> was
>>>>>>> going to make them available - but then realized that I had
>>>>>>> failed
>>>>>>> to consult the release_rules file when building, so have been
>>>>>>> meaning to check it out and rebuild if necessary. Will get on
>>>>>>> that.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Having said that, especially for the Mac platform, it could be
>>>>>>> useful to have access to "other" unofficial builds, for the
>>>>>>> reasons
>>>>>>> and with the disclaimers that you've suggested in your list post.
>>>>>>> I get the sense that the "larger" community wants the distributed
>>>>>>> files that are on the main download matrix to "follow the rules"
>>>>>>> exactly, but there would be no trouble linking to other ones
>>>>>>> from,
>>>>>>> for example the Mac info page - I should step up the cleaning up
>>>>>>> of
>>>>>>> that and make the links from other pages.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Cheers,
>>>>>>> Scott
>>>>>> ______________________________
>>>>>> Michael Barton, Professor & Curator
>>>>>> Department of Anthropology
>>>>>> Arizona State University
>>>>>> Tempe, AZ 85287-2402
>>>>>> USA
>>>>>>
>>>>>> voice: 480-965-6262; fax: 480-965-7671
>>>>>>
>>>>> ------
>>>>> Scott W. Mitchell Scott_Mitchell at carleton.ca
>>>>> Department of Geography and Environmental Studies
>>>>> Carleton University, B349 Loeb Building (Office A209)
>>>>> 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, ON Canada K1S 5B6
>>>>> +1-613-520-2600 ext 2695 Fax: 1-613-520-4301
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> ______________________________
>>>> Michael Barton, Professor & Curator
>>>> Department of Anthropology
>>>> Arizona State University
>>>> Tempe, AZ 85287-2402
>>>> USA
>>>>
>>>> voice: 480-965-6262; fax: 480-965-7671
>>>>
>>> ------
>>> Scott W. Mitchell Scott_Mitchell at carleton.ca
>>> Department of Geography and Environmental Studies
>>> Carleton University, B349 Loeb Building (Office A209)
>>> 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, ON Canada K1S 5B6
>>> +1-613-520-2600 ext 2695 Fax: 1-613-520-4301
>>>
>>
>> --
>> Markus Neteler <neteler itc it> http://mpa.itc.it
>> ITC-irst - Centro per la Ricerca Scientifica e Tecnologica
>> MPBA - Predictive Models for Biol. & Environ. Data Analysis
>> Via Sommarive, 18 - 38050 Povo (Trento), Italy
>>
> ------
> Scott W. Mitchell Scott_Mitchell at carleton.ca
> Department of Geography and Environmental Studies
> Carleton University, B349 Loeb Building (Office A209)
> 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, ON Canada K1S 5B6
> +1-613-520-2600 ext 2695 Fax: 1-613-520-4301
>
>
>
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