[horde] Horde installation method: PEAR vs tarballs

[Craig White]

On Fri, 2011-12-09 at 23:04 -0500, Simon Brereton wrote:
> 2011/12/9 Alan <lameventanas at gmail.com>:
> > 2011/12/7 Vilius Šumskas <vilius at lnk.lt>:
> >>> I have been using Horde 3 and several modules for a long time, and now
> >>> want to try Horde 4.
> >>> I was surprised when I discovered that Horde 4 has to be installed via
> >>> PEAR instead of the usual tarballs.
> >>> May I know the rationale behind this? I find this very inconvenient.
> >>> Is this only temporary or a permanent thing?
> >>> I don't run pear, cpan, or other "smart" installation programs in my
> >>> systems, unless using some kind of sandbox.
> >>
> >> Faster, simpler installation, dependency management, easier release management to name a few.
> >>
> >> This is permanent at least for near future.
> >
> > Some of my concerns with PEAR is that I don't know exactly what its
> > doing.  It tries to be a package manager but is not part of my package
> > manager.  It makes it harder to keep many installations (different
> > versions) in separate directories for testing (eg: testing
> > environments via virtual hosts).
> >
> > With a tarball I know everything that is going on and I can have more
> > control of my system.
> 
> 
> As has been discussed many times on the list in the last 8 months, if
> you want to go that route you're welcome (and free) to download the
> tarballs from the repository yourself).  Pear just allows you to do
> the download and unpacking with one command and manages the
> dependencies.  If you want to use 13 commands to pull down the .tar.gz
> and 13 commands to unpack them and manage the dependencies, then by
> all means that option is open to you.
----
indeed discussed quite a bit but you left unsaid what is clearly the big
win for the use of the pear install... updates.

The initial install for Horde has always been difficult as there are a
number of things to configure and even though they have a terrific web
based configuration system, it still doesn't configure the backends,
preferences which must be done manually.

But once you get it up and running, being able to do 'pear upgrade -a -B
-c horde' (or leave off the -B if you wish), it is simply beautiful.

Also, with Horde 3, even with the tarballs, you still had to install
pear modules, just less of them.

The new system is infinitely better.

Craig



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