On Tue, Oct 11, 2011 at 04:03:21PM -0700, Andrew McClure wrote:
> Anyway this is a problem as I see it in that the .zip and the .tar.gz
> contain in fact different files, but are presented on
> http://subversion.apache.org/download/ as if they are identical. At a
> minimum if you don't want to change the website, you could make it
> more explicit in the INSTALL file that this is the arrangement ("If
> configure is not found, you probably downloaded the zip by accident.")
Good point.
I don't think it will be difficult to include all files in both
archive formats. It shouldn't do any harm either.
> 2. The INSTALL file contains these absolutely terrifying three lines:
>
> B. Mac OS X
> --------
>
> [TBD: Describe BDB 4.0.x problem]
>
> I checked, and this "TBD" has been present in this file since *2003*.
> I don't understand what the BDB 4.0.x problem is, but if it's gone
> unfixed since 2003 maybe it is harmless enough you can just remove the
> TBD. Certainly I think you should either expand this or remove it
> completely.
I think BDB 4.0.x is obsolete. Just ignore that.
I agree that this comment should just be removed.
Whatever this problem is or was, we don't care anymore since nobody
is complaning about there being a problem.
> 3. This one's a little more fiddly. When I did my configure and
> install, I did a ./configure --prefix=/some/nonstandard/path because I
> did not want to replace the system svn and instead wanted to install a
> local copy of svn for just my user. For this same reason, I did not
> make install as root. However, when I did the make install, I got a
> series of alarming looking error messages stating that it was trying
> to install something or other into the /usr/apache2 (or whatever)
> directories but couldn't. From talking to danielsh it appears that
> this is just about installing the apache modules (which I don't think
> I wanted anyway) and that I should have configured with the
> --with-apache-libexecdir option. I think maybe you should consider one
> of the following.
>
> - Add a note to INSTALL (there is already an explanation in
> ./configure --help) clarifying the use of --with-apache-libexecdir /
> --without-apache-libexecdir. (I'm not sure if I for one would have
> noticed this however because the INSTALL file is long.)
I would prefer doing this.
> - (My suggestion) Set ./configure such that if you --prefix but do not
> issue an apache-libexecdir, it prints a warning letting you know that
> if you are --prefixing you are also likely to want one of the
> apache-libexecdir commands.
That idea won't fly. Because --prefix is also used by distribution packagers
to install svn into a fake prefix to prepare for packaging.
In which case they do want the apache modules.
There is no good default for this, I think. We'll need to document it
and expect people to read the documentation.
> What I would consider to be the "problem" here is that I got all these
> error messages during install, the error messages were actually
> benign, but not knowing what they meant I was not sure if it was safe
> to go ahead and use the newly installed copy of Subversion.
It is very hard to make the output of configure scripts friendly
for end users. In general, the primary consumers of configure script messages
are developers and binary packagers, both of which are expected to have a
certain amount of skill when it comes to interpreting these messages.
So please don't expect us to turn the configure script into a user-friendly
installer. That won't work very well because of the inherent complexity
of what the configure script is doing. There are binary packages for those
who don't want to or cannot deal with the configure script.
That said, yes, improving these messages cannot hurt. Now that you
understand their meaning, would you be able to send a patch to the
configure.ac file which improves some error messages?
Also note that there is a fairly comprehensive regression test suite
you can use to verify the compiled binaries. 'make check' invokes this
testsuite. See here for more information:
https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/subversion/trunk/subversion/tests/README
Received on 2011-10-12 11:13:07 CEST