[pycsw-devel] MS4W installer containing pycsw-dev for Windows users

[Tom Kralidis]

On Wed, Jan 16, 2019 at 1:48 PM Jeff McKenna
<jmckenna at gatewaygeomatics.com> wrote:
>
> Hi pycsw community!
>
> Short summary
> -------------
>
> Windows users might be interested that MS4W (the popular installer for
> MapServer https://ms4w.com) is almost ready to be released, with pycsw
> running (!!!).  It will be named "MS4W 4.0", and there is now an alpha
> package containing pycsw ready to test at
> https://ms4w.com/release/experimental/ms4w_4.0.0_alpha19.zip  (not
> familiar with running MS4W or how to install it?  You can wait for the
> setup.exe installer which will come shortly and install pycsw, Apache,
> for you)
>

Wow this is great news/work Jeff!  Thanks for this valuable addition
to ms4w.

> Longer explanation
> ------------------
>
> I've been working very hard on a big MS4W release, containing PHP 7 and
> Python, Java, CSharp mapscripts, and also its own included Python
> instance (hundreds of libraries in total, all compiled from source with
> Visual Studio 2017).  I've also now included pycsw (master), running on
> Python 3.7.0  (some of you devs are definitely cringing already I bet,
> seeing that version, but please hear me out)
>
> Note that such an installer, for PHP7 and Python, GDAL, MapServer,
> Apache, mod_wsgi (pycsw is running through mod_wsgi) demands a recent
> compiler that can handle building all of that together, which is why
> Visual Studio 2017 was chosen.
>
> Of course, to install pycsw I realize the hardcoded requirements (in
> requirements.txt) for lxml, pyproj, Shapely, but to make all of this
> work in the new 2017 compiler, I've used newer library versions for
> those (lxml 4.3.0, pyproj 1.9.6, Shapely 1.6.4.post2).
>

Are the newer versions the latest stable versions?  I'm also wondering
whether we should review our current requirements/dependencies (it's
been awhile) and whether we should add 3.7 to our Travis CI setup.

> The only change I had to make was to use "WKTReadingError" in
> pycsw/core/repository.py (line#41), because I am using a much newer
> version of Shapely and GEOS.  For the record, I couldn't find anyone
> else reporting that change.
>

I've filed an issue in https://github.com/geopython/pycsw/issues/584)
to safeguard
across Shapely versions.

> I guess my question is that if anyone sees any show stoppers for using
> these updated library versions.  I know, it is not recommended, but, out
> of this is an actual Windows installer for the many Windows users (MS4W
> gets between 4,000 to 6,000 installs a month, I monitor it closely).
>

IHMO I don't see any issues.  If we do find issues we are committed to
fixing them accordingly.

> The Alpha now includes a running catalogue service with just the SQLite
> cite.db records, but I am sure we can expand that later (note that I
> discovered that most if not all records as part of the 'gisdata' package
> are outdated/broken, which you can see for yourself in the pycsw viewer
> at http://demo.pycsw.org/viewer/ (that viewer leverages the 'gisdata'
> package for its records)
>

The view also has a 'service' endpoint which has a selected set of
harvested OGC web services.  I've filed an issue in
https://github.com/geopython/demo.pycsw.org/issues/2
to update the endpoints on demo.pycsw.org

> It would be great to have a lighter-weight viewer to demonstrate the
> power of pycsw for MS4W users (I realize pycsw is headless, but it is
> nice for new users to see it in action).  For sure I will push MS4W
> users to test their CSW services with the QGIS MetaSearch plugin (great
> work thanks!).
>

Can we start with the viewer on demo.pycsw.org? We can definitely
implement updates to enhance its useability.

> Well, I hope this news is accepted well, even if it pushes the limits of
> 'recommended/required' software versions.  I hope this big effort helps
> the whole pycsw community.
>

This is greatly appreciated, thank you Jeff!

..Tom


> Thanks for your great work on pycsw.
>
> -jeff
>
>
> --
> Jeff McKenna
> MapServer Consulting and Training Services
> https://gatewaygeomatics.com/
>
>
>
>
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