[Pipet Devel] Installation + Directory clean-up

[J.W. Bizzaro]

Brad Chapman wrote:
> 
>     After I finish and commit the changes to make the python stuff use
> omniORB, I was going to start work on wrapping Overflow's non-GUI UI
> code into the dl. What this means is that we are now going to need
> some formal means to install the Loci part of Piper, since we'll have
> to compile the extensions and C++ code and all of that.
>     What I'd like to propose is that we use Distutils to do this
> installation (http://www.python.org/sigs/distutils-sig/). Although
> Distutils will currently require an extra download and install, it is
> the up-and-coming official python installation tool, and will be
> included standard in python 1.6. I have used it for biopython and also
> for XDBM python stuff, and it is quite smooth. *Much* less horrible
> then autoconf, and it generates tarballs and, eventually, ready to run
> "built" distributions. It's pretty darn cool.

2 questions:

(1) Are you talking about a tool that the user will need to INSTALL Piper, or
a tool that the developers will use to PACKAGE Piper?

(2) What parts of Piper will be "managed" by this tool?  Just the Loci stuff
(UIL and DL) or all parts (including the BL and PL)?

> 1. Writing our own "installer" program to compile stuff and put it in
> the right place.

It would be nice if the user could just type "install".

> 2. There is a version of autoconf/automake that can be used for
> python. Although it has been submitted to athe autoconf/make people (a
> year ago, I guess) it is not included with these tools, so this would
> require that we distribute this along with the program.

Are you referring to James Henstridge's tools?

> Also, I think we should take this chance to narrow the Loci directory
> structure to not be so deep and expansive. It is going to be a pain to
> install all of this, and plus I think it is a little too deep. What
> I'd like to do is:
> 
> 1. Remove the 'library' step in the directory structure, since this
> seems redundant with modules (we can pick whichever people like
> better). I'd like to have something for the front (for example) like:
> 
> front
>    console
>    web
>    gnome
>       config
>       pixmaps
>       modules
> 
> So this will make things less deep and a little more understandable,
> IMO.

Okay, are we merging Loci with GMS and Overflow at this point?  Because I'm
confused why you're referring to the "old" Loci structure, which has a "front"
directory.  And "front" == "UIL" (User Interface Layer) now, and it should be
separated from your own DL.  Correct?

If you want to eliminate "library", that's fine with me.  I think "widgets"
should probably go into the "gnome" (I'll probably rename it "Pied" soon)
directory too.

> 2. Cut the stuff which is supposed to hold code out of the 'back.'
> The functionality that was supposed to be here is now in GMS, so we
> don't need the library/modules directories here.

Yeah, that makes sense.  I thought much of it would move to the DL as well.

Cheers.
Jeff
-- 
                      +----------------------------------+
                      |           J.W. Bizzaro           |
                      |                                  |
                      | http://bioinformatics.org/~jeff/ |
                      |                                  |
                      |        BIOINFORMATICS.ORG        |
                      |           The Open Lab           |
                      |                                  |
                      |    http://bioinformatics.org/    |
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