[tahoe-dev] wiki gardening needed Re: darcs patch: modified quickstart.html to note dependency on python-...

Mon Sep 20 07:42:12 UTC 2010

Dear David-Sarah:

Per:

http://tahoe-lafs.org/pipermail/tahoe-dev/2010-September/005198.html
http://tahoe-lafs.org/pipermail/tahoe-dev/2010-September/005199.html

and because Josh's buildslave successfully uploaded a pycryptopp
binary egg (version 0.5.19-r724 of pycryptopp):

http://tahoe-lafs.org/buildbot-pycryptopp/builders/Josh%20Ubuntu-amd64%20laptop/builds/5

I would like to effectively revert the patch that you and Josh wrote
for quickstart.html the other day. Here is my proposed revision:

{{{
HACK Zooko-Ofsimplegeos-MacBook-Pro:~/playground/tahoe-lafs/trunk$ darcs diff -u
diff -rN -u old-trunk/docs/quickstart.html new-trunk/docs/quickstart.html

--- old-trunk/docs/quickstart.html      2010-09-20 01:09:05.000000000 -0600
+++ new-trunk/docs/quickstart.html      2010-09-20 01:09:12.000000000 -0600
@@ -10,7 +10,7 @@

  <body>
    <h1>About Tahoe-LAFS</h1>
-    <p>Welcome to <a href="http://tahoe-lafs.org">the Tahoe-LAFS
project</a>, a secure, decentralized, fault-tolerant filesystem. <a
href="about.html">About Tahoe-LAFS.</a>
+    <p>Welcome to <a href="http://tahoe-lafs.org">the Tahoe-LAFS
project</a>, a secure, decentralized, fault-tolerant storage system.
<a href="about.html">About Tahoe-LAFS.</a>

    <h1>How To Get Tahoe-LAFS</h1>

@@ -18,7 +18,7 @@

    <h2>Install Python</h2>

-    <p>Check if you already have an adequate version of Python
installed by running <cite>python -V</cite>.  Python v2.4 (v2.4.4
or greater), Python v2.5 or Python v2.6 will work.
Python v3 does not work. On Windows, we recommend the use of
Python v2.6 (native, not Cygwin). If your OS distribution
packages Python development files such as <code>python.h</code>
separately, you will also need those; for example, the
<code>python-dev</code> package is needed on Ubuntu. If you don't have
one of these versions of Python installed, then follow the
instructions on <a
href="http://www.python.org/download/releases/2.6.5/">the Python
download page</a> to download and install Python v2.6, including
development files. Make sure that the path to the installation
directory has no spaces in it (e.g. on Windows, do not install Python
in the "<tt>Program Files</tt>" directory).</p>
+    <p>Check if you already have an adequate version of Python
installed by running <cite>python -V</cite>.  Python v2.4 (v2.4.4
or greater), Python v2.5, Python v2.6, or Python v2.7
will work. Python v3 does not work. On Windows, we recommend the
use of Python v2.6 (native, not Cygwin). If you don't have one of
these versions of Python installed, then follow the instructions on <a
href="http://www.python.org/download/releases/2.6.6/">the Python
download page</a> to download and install Python v2.6. Make sure
that the path to the installation directory has no spaces in it (e.g.
on Windows, do not install Python in the "<tt>Program Files</tt>"
directory).</p>
    <p>If you are on Windows, you now must manually install the
pywin32 package from <a
href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/pywin32/files/">the pywin32
site</a> before getting Tahoe-LAFS. Make sure to get the correct file
for the version of Python you are using — e.g. ending in
"py2.6.exe" for Python v2.6. If using 64-bit Windows, the file
should have "win-amd64" in its name.</p>

    <h2>Get Tahoe-LAFS</h2>
}}}


There are a couple of caveats about this proposed edit:

1. We don't actually have a binary egg of pycryptopp-0.5.20 for
py2.6/linux/amd64 hosted yet, see:
http://tahoe-lafs.org/source/tahoe-lafs/deps/tahoe-lafs-dep-eggs/?C=M;O=D
. As soon as either Josh's or Brian's buildslaves are respectively
connected to the Internet or empowered with flappclient then this
should be remedied.

2. There may be other binary eggs (PyCrypto, I assume) that are not
available, so the Python.h-free build will fail even once
pycryptopp-0.5.20 is available in binary egg.

3. ... which goes to show that we don't have an automated unit test of
whether the Python.h-free build will fail. Josh has offered to learn
how to use chroot to create a Python.h-free buildslave on his Ubuntu
10.04/amd64 box, hopefully tomorrow. This would provide that test, but
only for that platform. I can't think of a less labor-intensive way to
get that test running for each platform.

4. Should we explicitly say at the end of quickstart.html that if
quickstart.html doesn't work for you, then go to AdvancedInstall? I
really want to learn which platforms people are trying to do
quickstart.html on and whether the quickstart.html process works on
those platforms, so I think I would rather direct people to tahoe-dev
than to AdvancedInstall.

Regards,

Zooko

P.S. I tested it with Python 2.7.0 on an Ubuntu virtual machine and
unit tests passed.
