Re: [Nms-cgi-devel] Re: The Target Audience (crazyinsomniac)

[Dave C. <da...@da...>]

On Sat, Jan 19, 2002 at 11:33:43PM -0800, DH (cra...@ya...) wrote:
> Why don't we (or you) just include Mail::Mailer
> and all the neccessary modules in the distribution
> (use lib style of course)?

Because it makes our scritps harder to install than the opposition's. Either
they need to do a full installation of the module, or create a 'Mail' 
directory and put Mailer.pm onto that directory and then frig the "use lib"
statement to point at the right directory. And "use lib ." isn't an option
as some web servers (IIS at least) have strange ideas about the current
directory when a cgi program is run.
 
> Or at least do something along the lines of what
> I suggested in the forum here:
> http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?thread_id=258295&forum_id=122876

I like that idea. Has anyone else looked at it?

The only problem is that for some (large?) percentage of our audience, they
only have FTP access to their web server. This means that any kind of
installation script would only work in a certain percentage of cases.

Thinking as I write this (so don't shout me down if the idea's crap) how 
about a configuration script that could work as a CGI script. Load both the
config script and the target nms script into your cgi-bin. Run the config
script as a cgi script and it checks out certain options and alters the
source of the target script to run on the new server.

Of course, there's a bootstrapping problem. You'd need to know the path
to perl. Anyone got any comments on this?

> Most people *are* like the dude who emailed you davorg,
> at least until something bad happens.

I know. That was my point.
 
> I feel that in the very least the "laymen" ought to know if they can
> run something or not, or what they need in order to run it, 
> as opposed to a 500 error.

I absolutely agree.
 
> On another note, I really dislike mailing lists
> (forum, forum, yeeeees, forum ;^%).

It's a matter of opinion I guess :) I read mailing lists far more often
than I check forums.

Dave...

-- 

  Drugs are just bad m'kay