Topic: Suggesting a standard for install scripts

[Scott]

Hi,

Lastnight as I was installing some
addons for the esmith, I ran an
install.sh script which promptly
took the initiative to first wget all the
necessary rpm files that where needed
for the particular installation. Once all
of the downloads were completed the
script began installing the rpm files in
the order in which they needed to be
installed to eliminate any dependency
errors.

I wish I could remember which contrib that
was in order to give the proper cudos to the
person who made the installation so easy.
because that was pure genioouse.

In any case, scripts like this could be used
with tar and tar.gz files as well and make
installations a breeze. The script downloads
the file, unzips it, untars it, sets any file
permissions and then runs the proper
installation commands for an install method
as easy as ms windows.

This standard would help newbees do installs
that they otherwise would not attempt including
patches that the system may need.

Now that I've gotten this far, and double checked
my hunch, the script was the sme5.6 update 4
script. I'm impressed. Good job guys.

So what do you experts think about my proposed
standard for install scripts. Or is this supposed to
be the way you do it already?

Scott

[Rick Jones]

That script is nicely done, but then rpm will itself work out dependencies and do things in the right order, so I guess there's not much incentive for contributors to re-invent the wheel.

Auto-donwload is a bit tricky to do generically because of all the mirrors out there.

What I would _really_ like for the stuff on contribs.org is a standard way to download all the files on a contrib page. It really is a pain having to do each one manually (or cobble up a wget script). Or is there a way, and I just haven't found it?

Rick Jones

[Guck Puppy]

wget --recursive --no-parent http://wiki.contribs.org/path/to/files/

This does also get me the index.html, but I can live with rm index.html

[Rick Jones]

Ah - thanks! I'll have to remember that. I do most desktop stuff in Windows, and keep e-smith as a server, so I haven't spent much time using wget.

(I've always loved *nix as a core system, and still do for server applications, but I've also always hated X as a GUI :-/  One reason I like e-smith - no X! )