[Visualpython-users] packaging issues/bugs

[Floris B. <fb...@so...>]

Not sure if this is the right place for this really, this is a -users
list after all...

Anyway:
I've been playing around a bit with the package and ran accros the
following issues wich would be nice to see fixed.

[These notes are from visual-3.0.2 but seem still to be valid with
3.0.3]

* When unistalling the package this fails:
flub@laurie:/usr/local/src/visual-3.0.2$ ssu make uninstall
Making uninstall in visual
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/local/src/visual-3.0.2/visual'
list='__init__.py controls.py crayola.py factorial.py graph.py
macevent.py primitives.py text.py ui.py'; for p in $list; do \
  d=`echo "$p" | sed -e 's,^.*/,,'`; \
  rm -f /usr/local/lib/python2.3/site-packages/visual/$d; \
  rm -f /usr/local/lib/python2.3/site-packages/visual/${d}c; \
  rm -f /usr/local/lib/python2.3/site-packages/visual/${d}o; \
done
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/local/src/visual-3.0.2/visual'
Making uninstall in cvisual
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/local/src/visual-3.0.2/cvisual'
make[1]: *** No rule to make target `uninstall'.  Stop.
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/local/src/visual-3.0.2/cvisual'
make: *** [uninstall-recursive] Error 1

This is fairly clear.  Why is cvisual not using a Makefile.am?  If you
could wirite a Makefile.am this would be solved automatically.


* Continuing on this, when doing make unistall inside visual this still
leaves the empty directories behind: .../site-packages/visual,
..../visual/demos, ..../visual/docs, ..../visual/idle_VPython


* The documentation is installed in a rather odd place, wouldn't it be
  better to install in to $(prefix)/share/doc/$(package_name), the
  demos could then be installed into
  $(prefix)/share/doc/$(package_name)/[demos|examples]/ which would
  also make more sense.  I know automake doesn't support html
  documentation but you should still have enough control to do it
  yourself.


* When configuring the package with "./configure --disable-docs
  --disable-demos --disable-idle-vpython" the directories
  (.../visual/docs, .../visual/demos, .../visual/idel_VPyton) are still
  installed, but left empty.  Also the $(prefix)/bin/vpython script is
  still installed when using --disable-idle-vpython.  This shouldn't be
  imho.

  I recon the directories should not be there at all in these cases.
  Or is there some reasoning behind this?


* This might be marginal and an actual automake issue and indeed is
  not very important.  But the installation also fails when
  $(prefix)/bin does not exist.  Maybe in other places installation
  also fails if the parent directory is not there, I haven't had this
  situation.  But I recon the parent directories should be made when
  not there.  (cp --parents or install --directory or so)


I've discovered these problems while trying to make a debian package.
Currently it only is visual 3.0.2 and only works with debians default
python version in sarge (and sid?).  If you want to have a look or
test it (I would not mind some testing really ;-)) you can grab the
files at http://www.soton.ac.uk/~fb102/Debian/ including a i386 build.
I should be able to generate a sparc build as well but can't test that
really as I only have remote access to that machine for now.  If anyone
is intrested, let me know.

In regard to packaging it would be nice if there was a changelog kept.
It would be obvious what to look out for in that case...  The changes
are summarised in the relaese email so just write that down in a
changelog file.  Anyway, this is purely convenience.  If you recon
this is to much hassle for what benefits it returns just forget about
it.


Cheers
Floris


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