Re: [Koha-devel] [Koha] Current, Simple-to-install, Installed LiveCDs/LiveDVDs are okay ( was Re: Avoid LiveCDs/LiveDVDs)
Moving this to devel rather than users (apologies if anyone feels this should remain in general circulation.) At 05:41 PM 10/6/2012 +0800, Mark Tompsett wrote: [snip]
If it installs easily to a hard drive and let's them have a packages-based, ...
Mark - could you please explain your fixation with "packages-based"? (by which I *think* you mean .deb files -- please correct me if I'm mistaken.) I've been using "packages" for fifty years; they used to come in the post -- a cardboard box of punched cards -- then [t]ape [ar]chives hence 'tar' -- then standardized in the 1980s by IEEE/POSIX. They permit good transmission, particularly with modern compression and checksum techniques, of directory structure, permissions, linking, etc. They're usable in all *nix environments, not just the Debian family, but RHEL, AIX, Solaris, SuSE, BSD ... (even my old favourite Slackware.) A .tar is somewhat universal; .deb, .rpm, are o/s specific. Why limit the scope? Why not concentrate on the best possible quality of an ubiquitous .tar?
that is a good thing for non-technical people with a production environment.
Please, how many "production environments" are run by "non-technical people"? (or at least without access to "technical" people?) Is Koha destined for amateurs only? Even my local, rural, very small, public library uses the municipal IT department personnel (they're on SirsiDynix.) [snip]
Chris Cormack wrote:
Doing 2 LiveCD releases every month is a reasonable amount of work so I applaud them for wanting to.
I agree monthly would be perfect, but even every 6 months (in line with the new releases 3.10.0, 3.12.0, etc.) would be sufficient (not perfect, but sufficient).
Recognizing that I'm wandering from "live CDs", a Koha LTS should be the goal -- with security updates -- for a two year cycle in a production environment. I, and colleagues from other libraries, don't have policy, budgets or the inclination to play "new releases" every month, probably not even every six months; that's OK for video games, but not when your IT department is responsible for records in the hundreds of thousands (or many millions via Z39.xx standards.) On the other hand, enhancements are a marvelous idea, leading up to a "next LTS", and those of us who have time and the facilities should be encouraged. Such releases can be labeled "latest|whatever", but not "stable." [snip]
Though, current and previous stable releases on a monthly basis are probably best. Hopefully this clarifies everything from my perspective. :)
My knowledge of upgrade 3.6.x. to 3.8.x (12 month period) is a testament as to why an LTS, with more complete QA (or at least full documentation) should be on Koha's horizon (and to pre-empt comments concerning why I should search git and bugs and wiki and INSTALL (all variants deb, ubuntu, bland) and community and devel and users and download and ... I'm sure you understand.) Thanks and best regards - Paul
Patches accepted Chris On Oct 7, 2012 12:08 PM, "Paul" <paul.a@aandc.org> wrote:
Moving this to devel rather than users (apologies if anyone feels this should remain in general circulation.)
At 05:41 PM 10/6/2012 +0800, Mark Tompsett wrote: [snip]
If it installs easily to a hard drive and let's them have a packages-based, ...
Mark - could you please explain your fixation with "packages-based"? (by which I *think* you mean .deb files -- please correct me if I'm mistaken.) I've been using "packages" for fifty years; they used to come in the post -- a cardboard box of punched cards -- then [t]ape [ar]chives hence 'tar' -- then standardized in the 1980s by IEEE/POSIX. They permit good transmission, particularly with modern compression and checksum techniques, of directory structure, permissions, linking, etc. They're usable in all *nix environments, not just the Debian family, but RHEL, AIX, Solaris, SuSE, BSD ... (even my old favourite Slackware.)
A .tar is somewhat universal; .deb, .rpm, are o/s specific. Why limit the scope? Why not concentrate on the best possible quality of an ubiquitous .tar?
that is a good thing for non-technical people with a production
environment.
Please, how many "production environments" are run by "non-technical people"? (or at least without access to "technical" people?) Is Koha destined for amateurs only? Even my local, rural, very small, public library uses the municipal IT department personnel (they're on SirsiDynix.)
[snip]
Chris Cormack wrote:
Doing 2 LiveCD releases every month is a reasonable amount of work so I applaud them for wanting to.
I agree monthly would be perfect, but even every 6 months (in line with the new releases 3.10.0, 3.12.0, etc.) would be sufficient (not perfect, but sufficient).
Recognizing that I'm wandering from "live CDs", a Koha LTS should be the goal -- with security updates -- for a two year cycle in a production environment. I, and colleagues from other libraries, don't have policy, budgets or the inclination to play "new releases" every month, probably not even every six months; that's OK for video games, but not when your IT department is responsible for records in the hundreds of thousands (or many millions via Z39.xx standards.)
On the other hand, enhancements are a marvelous idea, leading up to a "next LTS", and those of us who have time and the facilities should be encouraged. Such releases can be labeled "latest|whatever", but not "stable."
[snip]
Though, current and previous stable releases on a monthly basis are probably best. Hopefully this clarifies everything from my perspective. :)
My knowledge of upgrade 3.6.x. to 3.8.x (12 month period) is a testament as to why an LTS, with more complete QA (or at least full documentation) should be on Koha's horizon (and to pre-empt comments concerning why I should search git and bugs and wiki and INSTALL (all variants deb, ubuntu, bland) and community and devel and users and download and ... I'm sure you understand.)
Thanks and best regards - Paul
On Sat, Oct 6, 2012 at 7:05 PM, Paul <paul.a@aandc.org> wrote:
My knowledge of upgrade 3.6.x. to 3.8.x (12 month period) is a testament as to why an LTS, with more complete QA (or at least full documentation) should be on Koha's horizon (and to pre-empt comments concerning why I should search git and bugs and wiki and INSTALL (all variants deb, ubuntu, bland) and community and devel and users and download and ... I'm sure you understand.)
I would have to say that your "testament" has been quite the unique one during my involvement with the Koha community. I have never known anyone to have quite the difficulties you have experienced. And there are many libraries similarly sized (and perhaps larger) than the one you represent in the community. I would say that your difficulties have stemmed from, among many things, the tendency to offend those you desire help from by criticizing the very help they offer. Of late your posts have more and more taken the tone of one who appears to think that free ("as in kittens") support ought to be the order of the day. It might be good for you to step back for a few moments and carefully review each of the threads which you have initiated and attempt to discern the trend of the tone of your responses in each. Remember, at any point you and your employer are welcome to contract any available support company to handle your Koha related issues, etc. There are many in the community who are more than capable of setting up and running an "outfit" like yours on Koha quickly and efficiently. But they do it for a living, not for free. My apologies if this sounds blunt, but really, you should have more tact and be less antagonistic in your response. No one in this community owes anything to anyone else. It is all volunteer. It has been said that discretion is the better part of valor, and it will certainly get you more mileage when looking for unpaid assistance. Kind Regards, Chris
Paul <paul.a@aandc.org>
A .tar is somewhat universal; .deb, .rpm, are o/s specific. Why limit the scope? Why not concentrate on the best possible quality of an ubiquitous .tar?
Because the LiveCD discussed is built on an OS that uses deb files. I like the tar and I've done a lot of work on it, but the ready-integrated and easy-to-upgrade deb is also very worth having.
that is a good thing for non-technical people with a production environment.
Please, how many "production environments" are run by "non-technical people"? (or at least without access to "technical" people?) Is Koha destined for amateurs only? Even my local, rural, very small, public library uses the municipal IT department personnel (they're on SirsiDynix.)
More than we'd like to think! Maybe yours is different, but trying to get central IT department personnel to install LMSes for real testing (not the sanitised vendor-provided demos) is often very difficult. Then other departments will sometimes try to block use of Koha - "it's not on our supported software list" or "it's not available from our approved suppliers" are two examples of reasons for not buying Koha. I'm pretty sure that Koha is so good that sometimes the librarians do it themselves, then present the IT department with something like "tough, we're already using it, so under official policy, you must support it"... at least twice recently, the co-op has been hired to... errr, how shall I say... normalise(?) an installation by "non-technical people". And it's basically worked fine. Anyway, the rest of the thing is deeply non-technical and I've written enough about release cycles and long-term support in the past, so I'm leaving this here for now and returning to coding. Hopefully the candidates for release manager and maintainer will have more to write on that! Thanks! -- MJ Ray (slef), member of www.software.coop, a for-more-than-profit co-op. http://koha-community.org supporter, web and library systems developer. In My Opinion Only: see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html Available for hire (including development) at http://www.software.coop/
participants (4)
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Chris Cormack -
Christopher Nighswonger -
MJ Ray -
Paul