Re: [Koha-devel] CPAN and re-inventing the wheel

[Tonnesen Steve]

On Sat, 6 Jul 2002, Pat Eyler wrote:

> We're already checking for (some) dependencies, and should probably just
> check for as many as we create.  The idea of creating a CPAN script is a
> good one (at list for non MAC/Win32 boxes).

I think I'm the one that prefers simpler installation.  Even with 1.2.1, I
had to help a person who had the Set::Scalar module installed, but it
wasn't in perl's module path.

I agree that there are some things that we should be relying on modules
for (MARC support, Z39.50), but I don't think that we should be adding a
module dependency for the 4 lines of code required to check the validity
of an ISBN.

It would also be nice to have a short tutorial on diagnosing module
problems (If you see something like _this_ in your apache error logs, that
means you are missing _this_.  Explain what the @INC paths are that should
also be down in the apache error logs, and how to use CPAN to install the
missing modules).  If this could be automated, that'd be great.

At this point in Koha's development, installation problems are losing us a
lot of potential users, in my opinion.  It's getting better, of course,
but we still need to pay attention to it.



Steve.