/ 
Link_Controller-0.037
River stage zero No dependents
++
 / INSTALL

INSTALLATION

<em>Last updated for LinkController 0.33.</em>

LinkController's installation system is based on that of a normal Perl module.

The module is normally distributed along with several other modules. Please install these before LinkController.

The portability of LinkController to systems other than RedHat Linux is likely to be a problem. The scale of that problem will depend on how far from RedHat Linux your system is. In the end as I get access to more Linux Like systems (e.g. FreeBSD / Hurd etc). I'd like to improve this situation, but not at the cost of efficiency and maintainability on Linux.

installation from Perl module

Currently the best way to install LinkController is to directly install it as a perl module.

  • install the CDB system

    If you have RedHat Linux 7.0 or greater, this should be included within your distribution. Probably called "freecdb". If not then download it from http://packages.debian.org/freecdb or from RedHat if you have another rpm based system.

  • upgrade the perl CPAN module if needed

    The CPAN module distributed with perl 5.6.0 and included in RedHat 7.1 and 7.2 has bugs which make it try to re-install perl repeatedly. Download and manually install version 1.59 or newer. N.B. don't use CPAN to upgrade itsself. That would trigger the perl reinstallation.

  • install LinkController using CPAN

    Run the command perl -MCPAN -e shell then within the CPAN shell run the command <install WWW::Link_Controller>.

installation from rpm

The easiest way to install link controller is to have the distribution in RPM format. Unfortunately, right now my version of RPM is patched and experimental, so I'm not producing RPMs yet. Hopefully, this will soon be fixed. In this case, simply install each of the RPMs with @command{rpm -i}. Trying to install just LinkController will give a list of the required rpm packages.

If your system doesn't run rpm then there isn't yet a pre-packaged version (hopefully someone will do a port to Debian's packaging system).

manual installation

Manual installation is a possibility, however since LinkController has been designed with the free use of perl modules, it takes patience. The basic technique to solve problems is to try installing each module in turn and to solve any requirements that it throws up when you try to do so.

installation pre-requisites

Before installing LinkController, you must install Perl and a series of related Perl modules. The full list is given in lib/Bundle/LinkController.pm. You may find that trying to install the LinkController bundle works for you (see the documentation of the CPAN module e.g. with `man CPAN') but it doesn't work for me. If it does work then you are sorted.

The prerequisites can be downloaded from CPAN. http://www.cpan.org/

installing the LinkController module

First you must install Perl and the modules as explained above. Then run the following commands.

       Perl Makefile.pl;
       make;
       make test;
       make install;

The file check-req.out should be empty. If it isn't that means that you have to install some more Perl modules. Read the file to find out which.

All of the tests should pass. Do make sure that you run them so that you know that everything is working properly.

Please note that you must run make before you run make test because of the configuration of the installation system.

Choosing a Platform

Installing this software can be easy or difficult depending on what operating system platform you are running on.. In approximate order from easiest to most difficult (this is my guess).

  • RedHat Linux equal or better than 6.0 (see http://www.redhat.com/ )

  • other Linux (see http://www.linux.org/ for example)

  • SUN-OS with Perl 5.003 or better already

  • other UNIX Perl 5.003 or better already

  • UNIX without Perl

  • WinNT / Windows2000 (use cygwin for the best chance)

  • Macintosh

  • Other Windows

With a previous version I had tried the top four. Probably to get the system running on other UNIX systems will require manually setting up the system since the programs for doing the default installation (in the @file{default-install}) because UNIX doesn't accurately emulate the GNU administration programs.

You will probably find it easier to just install Linux that to get this running on Windows. If you do want to get it running on other operating systems and provide clean patches, then I will be supportive and helpful, but please note that I think most of the portability problems will be with the underlying Perl modules and CDB related stuff.

References

http://scotclimb.org.uk/software/linkcont/ - download LinkController

http://www.linux.org/ - Get Linux

http://www.redhat.com/ - RedHat Linux - tested version

http://www.debian.org/ - Debian Linux.