[mapserver-users] Re: compiling Perl/Mapscript takes time

[Puneet Kishor]

Steve, Lowell,

On Friday, March 1, 2002, at 07:32  AM, Lowell Filak wrote:

> Here's a stab at it. "make install" simply moves all the files that are 
> needed into the locations they need to be, from what I've seen.

well, to me it didn't seem so obvious... here's why...

after I made the make file and ran make... I kinda forgot that I had to 
do make install as well. So, after make was over (I was quite happy to 
see it finally finish after about 9 mins of no activity... 9 mins on a 
600 MHz machine... it must have had to go to China to get something!), I 
saw mapscript.pm was in the directory. Well, I simply cp-ed it to one of 
the Perl library paths. Except, that wasn't it, because when I ran the 
demo script it had no clue what I was talking about. That is when I 
realized I had to make install. Went back and did that, and of course, 
it seemed that the files were being mv-ed again, but this time it worked.

So, either I didn't cp all the relevant files in the first place when I 
did it manually, or make install does a bit more than just cp.

Anyway, my ultimate aim is to try and make this easier for others. I 
appreciate, now more than ever, the Unix way of doing things... getting 
the source code and compiling the program from scratch. However, my Mac 
background, and the superbly seamless Aqua and Unix environment of MacOS 
X has really spoilt me. Because of standardization of layout, I wonder 
if folks do have to do this over and over again. I mean, it is so much 
easier to simply provide a mountable disk image, double-click it to 
mount it, drag and copy the entire application bundle, and you are good 
to go. That is how we do on MacOS X... it is really neat. That way I can 
spend about, say, 30 secs, on installing a new program, and then getting 
on with actually learning it and using it.

> You could do a "make install" on a second machine without recompiling 
> however there is one hitch, when the install runs it usually does a 
> move instead of a copy so if you were to tar the contents of the 
> compile directory, copy it to the other machine, & "make install" it 
> wouldn't find most of the files to install. I have to defer how to 
> change this to someone else.
>

A second thought... esp. to SDL... is it not possible to make the 
mapscript package available on CPAN so we can let CPAN or ppm take care 
of all the installation. That would be a major step toward popularizing 
use of Perl/Mapscript. Thoughts? Comments?

pk/


> The following message was sent by Puneet Kishor 
> <pkishor at GeoAnalytics.com> on Thu, 28 Feb 2002 11:12:23 -0600.
>
>> Steve,
>>
>> You were right... I was too impatient. I successfully compiled
>> Perl/Mapscript yesterday. It took about 9 mins... no activity at all, 
>> and
>> then, pow!
>>
>> It works sweet. Thanks. Are any of your Perl/Mapscript example source 
>> files
>> available for download? That would really help, combined with Lowell's 
>> docs.
>>
>> (Now, there is that matter of GDAL, Proj.4, etc. that I have to tackle.
>> Hoping to hear from Frank, or someone else.)
>>
>> Btw, could you (or someone else... Lowell, perhaps) explain to me what 
>> "make
>> install" does? The reason I ask is... how could I move the mapscript.pm
>> module to another computer (same OS, of course) without having to 
>> recompile
>> it? It is not just a matter of copying the .pm file to the Perl modules
>> library, is it?
>>
>> Tia,
>>
>> pk/