[yt-users] Install Script Issues

[Rick Wagner]

Hi Matt,

> Did it by any chance hang for a *really* long time while it claimed to
> be downloading?  Maybe the connection to the remote server timed
> out...

Hmmm...actually, it took forever downloading HDF5 (probably because  
it was using FTP). I didn't see any errors related to the download,  
either on the command line, or in the install log.

>> This was fixed by setting INST_ZLIB=0. Again, not a big deal.
>
> You can also force it to re-download by removing whatever vestigial
> traces of zlib-*.gz it has downloaded.

That's pretty much what I did; I blew away the install directory and  
started over to test the process.

> The longer term, better solution here is to verify against md5sums; I
> have not implemented this, but it is (clearly) the right way to do it.
>  It's probably easier to do this with a framework like zc.buildout,
> but that is not quite as flexible as raw shell scripting for the
> specific requirements we have -- it's designed much more for egg-based
> installations, which we're moving away from with yt.  (
> http://yt.enzotools.org/ticket/175 )  I'll take a look, though,
> because I've been bitten by weird wget-truncation problems before,
> too.

I think using a deployment tool like zc.buildout would be good, if  
you were deploying a variety of tools, instead of just one. As it is,  
your script builds everything, including Python, on unknown machines,  
almost flawlessly. It's much more manageable on the platforms we're  
working on, and better than adding another layer of abstraction.  
Beside, you'd have to script the Python install, getting  
bootstrap.py, getting the config file, etc. So, stick with what's  
working, and hopefully it will help keep the dependencies at a  
reasonable level, which makes all of our lives easier.

--Rick