Re: RFC: improving the shar installer (was: 2.11.56 problems)

[Valentin Villenave]

2008/8/22 Mats Bengtsson <address@hidden>:

Greetings Mats,

I have been working on a slightly better-looking installer (the code
is pure amateurism, of course, but if I'm lucky enough some real guy
will look into it some day).

> One practical problem is that the way to get root access differs from Linux
> distribution
> to Linux distribution.  For some, like Ubuntu, the only possibility is to
> use sudo, whereas
> many other distributions have not configured sudo this way, so you have to
> use su.

Hm, if there are only two methods (su and sudo), it should be
achievable. I have tried to take both into account in my script, but
since I have never ever used sudo I can't guarantee it will work
(works fine with su, though).

> Also, if I ran an installation program that suddenly asked for my password
> (or even worse,
> for the root password) I would get really suspicious.

You have a point. Technically, my script doesn't ask for the password,
it merely lets the shell ask for it...

> You're about to install LilyPond in $HOME/lilypond/ and the programs will be
> placed in
> $HOME/bin/.
> If you prefer to install LilyPond in /usr/local/lilypond with the programs
> placed in /usr/local/bin/,
> then abort now and rerun the installer with root privileges, i.e. using
> sudo sh lilypond-X.Y.Z-U.linux-x86.sh
> or
> su
> sh lilypond-X.Y.Z-U.linux-x86.sh

Yes, this would probably be much easier; however my goal was also to
make it sexy :)

> A slightly more ambitious alternative is to let the installer check if
> $HOME/bin/ is in the
> $PATH and issue more specific warnings and instructions in that case.

Oh yes. I should be able to do that, but first I'd like some somments
about the attached patch (I'm also attaching a standalone version of
the shell script, with the two "tail" lines commented, just in case
anyone would like to run it :-).

Cheers,
Valentin

0001-Large-modifications-in-sharhead.sh.patch
Description: Binary data

sharhead.sh
Description: Bourne shell script