[lsst-dm-stack-users] missing Bison etc.

[Dave Monet]

Of course, the cognoscenti realized yesterday afternoon
that my local version (i.e., under /home/dgm/linux) of
Bison would not be found by newinstall.sh, and that
this exercise was just a waste of time.

It would seem that a BOLD FACE note on the Prerequisites
page is that the subject utilities must be installed,
and that they MUST be installed in root-ish paths like
/usr or /bin or similar.

I am still mystified by the utter reliance of DM on
root access.  I have forgotten if LSST is an FFRDC
or just a scummy contractor, but I am amazed that
such lax IT/IA security standards are legal given
the you are spending Government money.

The typical package installs as
    ./configure --prefix=/some/reasonable/path
It is too bad that there isn't an LSST hook
    setenv LOOK_HERE_TOO /some/reasonable/path
to sense that these exist.

I should note in passing that the DoD Linux is
some version of RHEL mostly frozen in time except
for places where security updates are needed.
Given the impossibility of root access, if LSST
needs something like the current version of various
utilities, the ones found in root-ish paths may
not be acceptable.  Again, looking somewhere else
in addition to the fixed path names seems like
a really good idea.

The DM installation on the first machine (the one
that failed astrometry.net until fixed) appears
to have worked.  Now all I have to do is figure
out how to prove it works and then figure out
what it can do.

Sorry to be a pill.  The current thread is closed
as far as I am concerned.  I can run the DM stack
on one machine, and that is necessary and sufficient.

-Dave