[OPEN-ILS-DEV] ACCESS Hackfest super-quick Evergreen wrap up

[Bill Erickson]

At the Access 2007 Hackfest (http://access2007.uvic.ca/?page_id=8), 
there was a lot of interest in Evergreen.  There was a group of new 
users doing a full install with bib data as well as another group who 
worked on smoothing out the install with whatever low-hanging fruit we 
could find.  It was all a lot of fun and quite productive.  I promised I 
would blog about it, but I hope an email will suffice for now...

For the latter group, apart from some documentation cleanup, two 
large-ish bits of code were committed.  One was a configuration test script:
 
http://svn.open-ils.org/trac/ILS/browser/trunk/Open-ILS/src/support-scripts/settings-tester.pl

This script checks to make sure you have the correct Perl modules 
installed, connects to Jabber, and connects to the database using your 
config files.  The idea, naturally, is to test simple stuff before 
launching the ILS, at which point debugging becomes more difficult.  
There is a lot more the script could do and suggestions/patches are 
always welcome.

I run it like so:

$ perl settings-tester.pl /openils/conf/opensrf_core.xml

Additionally, a prerequisites makefile that I had been sitting on for a 
while (not ready for public consumption) was cleaned up and committed. 

http://svn.open-ils.org/trac/ILS/browser/trunk/Open-ILS/src/extras/Makefile.install

As you can see in the notes, it only works with Debian Etch and Gentoo. 

I run it like so:

$ make debian

Note:  Using the makefile for Gentoo is a little bit more tricky than 
with Debian.   Since Debian versions have a  well-known set of packages, 
you know exactly what packages you are installing when you type "make 
debian" on an Etch machine.  With Gentoo, however, you are getting 
whatever Gentoo says you should at that particular time.  On AMD64 
machines, in particular, you won't get very far without doing some 
manual tweaking of /etc/portage/package.keywords (or your favorite 
Gentoo masked package incantations) given the number of fully masked 
packages.

I hope these scripts help.  Many thanks to everyone who helped with 
code, docs, and thoughts!

-bill

-- 
Bill Erickson
| VP, Software Development & Integration
| Equinox Software, Inc. / The Evergreen Experts
| phone: 877-OPEN-ILS (673-6457)
| email: erickson at esilibrary.com
| web: http://esilibrary.com