[OPEN-ILS-DEV] ***SPAM*** Building/installing Everygreen (Open ILS) staff client under CentOS 5

[Robert Heller]

Our local library uses (diskless) Linux workstations running CentOS 5
and our regional library system will be moving to Everygreen in about a
year, so as the techy in charge of these machines I am looking into
getting the Everygreen staff client working on these machines (well the
ones the staff uses).

I downloaded the Everygreen 1.6.0.6 source tarball, and tried to
configure it on my CentOS 5.5 system, but ran into many dependency
problems (way too numberious to list here -- they seem to be either
ones that fail because Red Hat/CentOS handles httpd-devel and arp-devel
different (apsx instead of apsx2 and arp-1-config install of
arp-config) and because the configure script is checking for 'main' in
several libraries [dumb -- libraries generally don't have main() in
them!]).

I also installed the MS-Windows staff client using Wine and I was able
to fire it up using the native Linux xulrunner, so I know that the
JavaScript, etc. that implements the staff client will run under the
CentOS without problems.  Yes, I know that I can simply install the
MS-Windows staff client and then tar up the build subdir, create a 2-3
line bash script and install these pieces someplace convient (eg
/usr/local/share/Everygreen/build and
/usr/local/bin/Everygreen-staff-client.sh), but given that the
MS-Windows staff client is a GUI, this makes it hard to automate as part
of an update script.  If I could just download a tarball (with or
without an *cli* install script), I would be much happier adminstrator.

My questions are:

1) Do I have to build and install OpenSRF in order to build *only* the
staff client?  If so, why?  The only dependency the the configure file
for Everygreen checks for that *seems* to be needed for the staff client
is OpenSRF, and it seems it just wants to copy some JavaScript code
over. Is there some way to avoid having to build and install OpenSRF,
*just to build* the staff client?

2) Do I have to build Everygreen (OpenILS) itself in order to build the
staff client?  I hope not.

3) Exactly *why* isn't there a "built" version of the *staff client for
Linux available for download?  The only *run time* depencency (as far as
I can tell) is the presence of xulrunner, which is a standard package
for most (all?) Linux distros.  All that would be needed would be a tar
file of the build directory, along with a simple bash script, and a
staffclient.desktop file, some icons, a README file, an INSTALL file,
and *maybe* a install.sh file, etc.

Yes, I know 90% of libraries are using MS-Windows workstations, but what
about the other 10% of libraries that are using something else (eg
Linux)?  I don't really need a CentOS RPM or anything, just a generic any
distro installable tar file is all that is needed.

-- 
Robert Heller             -- 978-544-6933
Deepwoods Software        -- Download the Model Railroad System
http://www.deepsoft.com/  -- Binaries for Linux and MS-Windows
heller at deepsoft.com       -- http://www.deepsoft.com/ModelRailroadSystem/