[Koha-devel] koha-dev-env.deb -- setting up a Koha development environment on Debian squeeze

[Lars Wirzenius]

Hi.

If one wants to develop Koha, one needs to set up a computer with all
the necessary software installed. To simplify this for those of us using
Debian squeeze (the current testing/development version), I made a .deb
package that does that.

(This is unfortunately helpful for those not using Debian.)

It is called koha-dev-env, the current version is 0.1, and it is
available via apt if you add the following to your sources.list:

        deb http://debian.catalyst.net.nz/catalyst stable catalyst

After that, this should work:

        apt-get update
        apt-get install koha-dev-env
        
There is a public git repository for the package:

        git clone git://git.catalyst.net.nz/koha-dev-env.git
        
The package depends on a number of other Debian packages which provide
CPAN modules that Koha requires. Some of the CPAN modules are not (yet)
packaged for Debian (at least not in squeeze), so the package's postinst
script installs them via the cpan command.

This is the first step in my plan to create a Debian package for Koha.
The rest of the plan is, roughly:

* Prepare Debian packages for all CPAN modules Koha needs that are not 
  in Debian yet.

* Work with Debian to get all the CPAN modules included in Debian.

* Prepare a simplistic Koha package.

* Improve on Koha package, based on experiences on using it in various
  installations.

* When Koha package is of sufficient quality, upload it to Debian.

There may be some things that Koha will need to change, to make
packaging it for Debian easier. For example, Koha currently declares
that it wants Storable 2.21 from CPAN, when Debian only has 2.20. If the
newer version is not actually required, it would be good to bump that
down to what Debian has.

All feedback, and bug reports, are welcome. I'm happy with them coming
to the list, where others can join the discussion, or to me directly.