[Eric] Simplified installation?

[Andreas Pakulat]

On 19.06.07 22:11:47, Peter Bradley wrote:
> Ysgrifennodd Andreas Pakulat:
> >Hmm, Maybe I'm already too used to the quirks of win32, but for me
> >installing eric4 worked perfectly fine (without MSYS of course). I
> >already had Qt4.3 compiled from sources (actually qt-copy from KDE's
> >svn) and Python installed too. So I went ahead and installed the latest
> >sip release . No other problems here. Then
> >installed QScintilla2, absolutely no problems. After that I installed
> >PyQt4, 2 problems, small bug in configure.py here wrt. a missing
> >QMAKE_CFLAGS_THREAD variable in mkspecs/default/qmake.conf. The other
> >one is that sip generates a wrong Qt path in the Makefile (it uses /
> >instead of \). Both really easy to solve - IMHO. Then I built and
> >installed the python wrappers for QScintilla and that had the same
> >slash-problem for the installation as PyQt itself. 
> >Last thing is eric4, only problem here was the need to copy
> >qscintilla2.dll into Qt's bin directory because the lib dir is not in
> >PATH. Thats all, eric4 now runs and shows its configuration dialog.
> >
> >Yes this is not straight forward (and AFAIK Phil will provide eric4
> >packages sooner or later, can't recall if he said with the next release
> >or earlier), but the problems are not that big either. Also I reported
> >these three to Phil already so I expect them to be fixed soon.
> 
> I'm sure you're right, Andreas; but personally I think the problem is at least 
> as much to do with documentation as with the business of having to download, 
> compile and install all sorts of dependencies from source.

I didn't say that having a binary installer which includes eric4, pyqt,
qscintilla, qt, sip and python is a bad idea. In fact I think thats a
pretty good idea (after all its the same thing on linux, only very few
people install this from source if they have packages available).

> First you need a compiler, probably, because there's no guarantee there will be 
> one installed; especially on Windows.

Thats covered by downloading the qt-mingw bundle. The compiler is then
setup perfectly fine. I just didn't use that because I'm helping with
the win32-port of kde4 and thus have a compiler installed and qt-copy
from KDE built anyway already.

> Then you need all the dependent programs 
> and sources.  Unfortunately, the download site doesn't list all the 
> dependencies (e.g. SIP is not listed IIRC),

I guess you're talking about eric4 here and its completely correct for
it to not list sip as dependecy because eric4 doesn't depend on sip at
all. PyQt and the python bindings of QScintilla depend on sip and at
least PyQt states so on its download page. And the eric page links to
both sites properly.

> nor does it list them in the order in which they should be installed. 

Thats wrong as well. The README file that comes with eric clearly states
the order. This is a must-read for anybody who downloads software from
the net.

> Then you get offered binary installers, which you use only to find
> that, despite what they say about installing all the necessary bits,
> they don't in fact do so.

I can't comment on that one, as I didn't try the binary packages.
However if there's something missing you should report that from Phil.
He's very helpful normally.

> Then you find that because you 
> followed the prerequisites in the order they're listed on the Eric download 
> site that you've installed stuff in the wrong order

As I said, reading the README that comes with a software package is a
have-to-do. If you fail to do so you're on your own. In fact thats the
first thing I did for sip (after a simple python configure.py;
mingw32-make only produced an endless loop), PyQt, QScintilla and also
eric4 (I opened eric4's README right after installing sip, because I was
unsure of the order).

> and/or the wrong places and 

Huh? Well, you should install python packages into
<pythondir>/lib/site-packages, but thats pretty well known among Python
developers I think. Ok the binaries go into <pythondir> and not
<pythondir>/bin as on *nix. Or you add your bin-dir to the install path.

As far as the qscintilla2.dll ending up in the wrong dir, thats a
problem in the QScintilla build system, nothing that the end user did
wrong.

Last but not least: The configure.py of PyQt4 and QScintilla allow to
specify the directory where Qt and/or QScintilla is installed. On Linux
I have Qt in $HOME/qt-copy, python in $HOME/python2.5 and QScintilla in
$HOME/qscintilla2 and no problems and I don't expect any doing something
similar on win32.

> that you have to uninstall all sorts of stuff and by this time you can't 
> remember exactly what you installed, and how, and when.

Then you should take a piece of paper and note this down. Sorry, but
without a packaging system this is impossible to do. Unfortunately the
OS you're using doesn't bring one with it and neither does it allow to
easily integrate one.

> Then you decide life's too short and start looking for proprietary IDEs.

Thats too bad, I guess you just have too much money. Would you care to
donate some to me please (bank details via pm).

> If the Eric download site gave a blow-by-blow account of what you have to do to 
> install it,

Thats wrong, the download site offers a download. I'd personally put the
requirements on a separate page and I'd also put parts of the README
into an Install page. But Detlev does this in his free time and its a
one-mane show so I'm actually fine with the fact that the README comming
with eric4 is explaining everything you need to know.

> I'm sure things would improve immensely.  And by "blow-by-blow", I 
> mean a set of instructions that anyone can follow as long as they're not 
> totally computer illiterate. 

Compiling something from source is not something that "joe average"
should do. Thats why I find it very good that Phil wants to provide
eric4 binary packages as well. OTOH if you have PyQt and QScintilla2
(including python bindings) installed via binary packages a python
install.py in eric4's source dir should work without any problems.

> In work, I make our technical writers follow their own instructions
> step-by-step, exactly as written before I'll sign off on them.  It's
> amazing how many times you have to say, "Why are you doing that?  It's
> not in what you've written." or "What program's that you're using?  Do
> you know for sure that all your users have it installed?"

Hmm, I don't find the instructions coming with sip, PyQt4, QScintilla
and eric4 misleading or wrong. I didn't do anything but executing (in
this order)

<sip>
python configure.py -p win32-g++
mingw32-make
mingw32-make install
<QScintilla/Qt4>
qmake
mingw32-make
mingw32-make install
<PyQt4>
python configure.py -c -j 8
mingw32-make
mingw32-make install
<QScintilla/Python>
python configure.py
mingw32-make
mingw32-make install
<eric4>
python install.py

Yes I did hit 3 problems, I reported them to Phil and I expect them to
be fixed soon. Oh, and those -c -j 8 are in configure.py --help output.

And all of these are explained in the README documents that come with
each package (well actually the qScintilla one is a html file in doc/Qt4
or some such, which is a bit weird).

Andreas

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