Greetings,
It
is important to make sure you have the correct repo added and the key installed.
I
typically have done tarball installs. Though, I am slowly coming around to the
idea of koha-common in my Ubuntu environments. Admittedly, I needed something
working, and didn’t have time to look at the koha-common install
process.
I
have written a handy-dandy script (check_deps.sh) which uses apt-file
to:
1)
determine which is missing in {OS}.{version}.packages files – though currently
only debian and ubuntu have those kinds of files in the misc_install
directory
2)
determine what needs to be installed (can be apt-get’d)
3)
determine what needs to be CPAN’d, because it’s not listed via
apt-file.
I
can’t remember which bug report I attached it to.
I
also attempted an RPM-based version of it for yum (yuminstall.sh). However, the
number of dependencies missing under CentOS 6.3 (5.8 won’t work by default,
unless you upgrade perl) was just too high and my netbook too underpowered. I
gave up on attempting Fedora because of my underpowered netbook. However, the
script does list what is missing, and if there was man power to RPM package them
(like that is going to happen), then it would be possible to support RPM-based
OS’s too. However, given the man-power required. I don’t think it is
recommended.
In
the past some people have exerted much effort trying to get it to run under
Windows. Frankly, I use virtualbox with a wired connection as a bridged adapter,
no need to get it to run natively. And again, I use Ubuntu on my VMs. The
problem is that RPM-based OS’ tend to be behind in releasing libraries. It is
even worse for Windows versions (e.g. ActiveState? Perl).
So,
to summarize my take on preferences:
tarballs are a waste of your time (I had problems getting the tarball to build
under debian – yes, I tried for 3.6.3 – but this was before I was aware of the
koha-community repository.)
2)
Ubuntu 10.04 and 12.04 LTS – try to use packages, but at least set up the
koha-community repository. Tarballs work, but are not recommended.
3)
Some other DEB-based OS, though if given the choice, please choose Debian. Did I
say how wonderful the packages were if you aren’t developing? And use git if you
are?
4)
If you have no other choice and must use something other than a DEB-based OS,
tarball is your only option, and we make no promises that it will work or that
we’ll be able to help you.
So,
what OS versions does Koha run on? Whatever you can get it to work on, but
Debian 6+ and Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and Ubuntu 12.04 LTS are preferred. When Ubuntu
14.04 LTS comes out, it is my understanding that 10.04 support will be
dropped.
> One implication of this would be that patches introducing
dependencies
> not easily available on a supported system would be rejected or
deferred
> until such time as they were easily available. So, for example, if a
patch
> introduced a dependency that's packaged for Debian Wheezy, but
not
> for Squeeze, it would not be added to Koha until Wheezy was
released.
If it is merely a perl dependency, couldn’t it be packaged up on the
koha-community repository? Wouldn’t a newer version in main replace the older
koha-community version? I ask out of technical ignorance. If it behaves that
way, then I don’t see why it would have to hold back a patch until an OS
release.
Hope
this rambling is/was mildly useful.