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

[Dustin Lang]

Hi,

I have worked on plenty of systems where a note to the sysadmin asking for 
version x.y of package z results in "sorry, we run OS A and it only 
provides version B.C".  I often have a ~/software directory with my 
'local' installs, set up with PKG_CONFIG_PATH, PYTHONPATH, PATH, and 
LD_LIBRARY_PATH.  It must be an absolute requirement that newinstall.sh 
respect PATH, LD_LIBRARY_PATH, etc, right?  It should be possible to 
install in a virtualenv, right?  I understand the desire to "protect" the 
novice user, but I think we should do that by explicitly listing a few 
commands to unset "dangerous" variables before starting the install, to 
the extent that's workable.  For example, the mistake that I recently 
bothered the list with, where I had BASH_ENV set, can be solved by 
unsetting that variable before starting the install.  We already have a 
list of variables that we ask the user to unset before the install, so we 
just have to add that variable to the list.  To me, that's an ideal 
solution: it's *transparent* rather than being hidden away in a script, 
expert users will understand what's going on, and novice users will just 
happily copy-n-paste the magical commands.

Just my $0.02,

--dustin


On Sat, 28 Jun 2014, Robert Lupton the Good wrote:

> Dear Dave,
> 
> I'm usually sympathetic to such travails, but in this case I think you're a little wide of the mark.
> 
> > 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.
> 
> /usr/local/bin used to be the standard.
> 
> I don't think that they need be anywhere special.  They just have to be 
> generally visible to the scripts.  That should just be a matter of 
> having them in your default PATH (but I'd defer to Mario if he cleans 
> that up).  It's a fine line, actually:  get all the standard things, but 
> don't pick up per-user hacks.
> 
> > 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.
> 
> You do not need root access.  We assume that you have a normal machine 
> where you ask your sysadmin to install packages such as bison --- yacc 
> has been a standard part of unix since pre-1980 and bison since maybe 
> 1990?
> 
> I am happy to work on reducing the prerequisites further, but you will 
> need a modernish C++ compiler whatever we do.
> 
> 							R
> 
>