[dev] Installation Thoughts

[Jan Schneider]

Zitat von Mathieu Parent <math.parent at gmail.com>:

> Hi Michael,
>
> 2013/10/17 Michael M Slusarz <slusarz at horde.org>:
>> Going through our installation process on a Debian VM (specifically using a
>> distro that has given us issues), and here's what I think so far.  (This is
>> simply on the PEAR install process - this is independent of
>> configuring/running any of our code.)
>
> (with my Debian packager hat).
>
> Shouldn't the recommended way to install Horde on distributions be
> using the native package manager?

At least for those distros that keep the horde packages up-to-date,  
yes, probably. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't make the pear  
installation easier, even on package-supported distros.

> For Debian jessie, this can be done with:
> apt-get install php-horde-webmail # for example
>
> Complete instructions (including Debian 7) are at:  
> https://wiki.debian.org/Horde
>
> This provide better upgrade mechanism as well as proper dependency
> tracking (PEAR lacks in those both areas, and Composer is not really
> better).

Agreed.

>> * Two immediate fatal flaws I see.  beta/alpha packages are NEVER installed
>> and packages from foreign channels are NEVER installed.  At least with the
>> default PEAR settings on Debian 7.
>
> This seems a reasonable default.
>
> [...]
>>
>> This can be fixed by doing a force install (-f).  But I have to admit that,
>> as someone familiar with PEAR/PECL, this is not apparent to me at all.  For
>> someone -- i.e. pretty much every one else -- they are going to think that
>> horde_lz4 is properly installed on their system.
>
> Yes. PEAR is broken in handling PECL packages.
>
>> Takeaways from all this:
>>   1. Not saying we should remove -B, but we have to workaround this.
>
> Why don't you simply remove -B?

Because it requires build permissions and environments and  
dependencies like external libraries that cannot simply be pulled in.  
Installing without -B is explicitly documented by the way.
-- 
Jan Schneider
The Horde Project
http://www.horde.org/