binary installers

[StefanKarpinski]

To release and expect more than a handful of hardcore users to try Julia, we need easy binary installers. Viral said he's done this on OS X before. Not sure what we can do on Linux — RPMs? Debian packages?

[ViralBShah]

Mac turned out to be easy. The package just installs a julia-mac directory in the home directory, which can be uninstalled by simply deleting it.

For linux, I think we should just release a tar.gz that people can install wherever they want. I could have made a debian package, but I no longer a debian maintainer. That will automatically happen.

RPMs are painful, and you have all these dependencies that can only be resolved with yum. We are better off with a self-contained tarball on linux, which is statically linked.

-viral

On Oct 20, 2011, at 11:09 AM, Stefan Karpinski wrote:

To release and expect more than a handful of hardcore users to try Julia, we need easy binary installers. Viral said he's done this on OS X before. Not sure what we can do on Linux — RPMs? Debian packages?

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub:
#236

[StefanKarpinski]

You're probably right for Linux. Since we include all our own libraries, it should be easy enough to just download a tarball of a precompiled Julia directory with the .git directory removed. On Linux, can we assume that people are savvy enough to untar the tarball where they want it?

[JeffBezanson]

We can put quick instructions wherever the download link is.
To me this is such a great way to install stuff. Apple's own usability guidelines say not to use installers or packagers if you can avoid it. You're supposed to ship a disk image with a folder in it, and installing equals dragging that folder somewhere. So much better than updating a package database or running scripts that make various mysterious changes.

[JeffBezanson]

Need a target that builds a statically-linked julia-release-readline.

[ViralBShah]

We can build statically since commit 475b8ea. The install directory also creates a self-contained tarball that can work out of any directory.

Eventually, once we get some traction, debian packages, RPMs, Mac dmgs etc. will get done. For now, a tarball is sufficient.

[StefanKarpinski]

When I move my julia directory and untar one of these tarballs, I still get this:

$ ./julia-release-readline 
dlopen(libfdm.dylib, 2): image not found
error during init:
could not load module libfdm sys.ji:12

[StefanKarpinski]

Ok, got it to work by setting LD_LIBRARY_PATH: export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$(JULIA_HOME)/lib. That needs to go in the install instructions for sure.

[StefanKarpinski]

Is there any way we could statically link in all of the libraries in lib/ since we always load them? Then we could just have a single fat binary, which would be kind of nice and simple.

[JeffBezanson]

Wait a second, our own dlopen should automatically look in julia_home/lib, determined at run time. Do you have a JULIA_HOME environment variable set? If so, that overrides the automatic path finder.

[ViralBShah]

Yes, we could do that for default libs. Seems avoidable though.

But, I did not encounter this problem in all my testing. I think the current solution should work just fine. Do you have some environment variables that are interfering, like Jeff suggested?

On 30-Oct-2011, at 10:36 PM, Stefan Karpinskireply@reply.github.com wrote:

Is there any way we could statically link in all of the libraries in lib/ since we always load them? Then we could just have a single fat binary, which would be kind of nice and simple.

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub:
#236 (comment)

[ViralBShah]

I believe that this variable is not recognized by os x, unless it is a recent change in lion. Usually it is DYLD...

On 30-Oct-2011, at 10:31 PM, Stefan Karpinskireply@reply.github.com wrote:

Ok, got it to work by setting LD_LIBRARY_PATH: export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$(JULIA_HOME)/lib. That needs to go in the install instructions for sure.

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub:
#236 (comment)

[StefanKarpinski]

This trouble was all from the fact that I do set JULIA_HOME. I now simply don't do that and everything is fine. Sorry for the ruckus.

[ViralBShah]

Ok - but this is good to know.

-viral

On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 11:17 AM, Stefan Karpinski
reply@reply.github.com
wrote:

This trouble was all from the fact that I do set JULIA_HOME. I now simply don't do that and everything is fine. Sorry for the ruckus.

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub:
#236 (comment)