CamelBox install
Don
my 32-bit WinXP box; it was particularly frustrating. I downloaded the
installer with Firefox, and launched it. On many attempts I received
an error that was not clear. The last three lines said:
Output folder: C:\camelbox
Create folder: C:\camelbox\bin
Created uninstaller: C:\camelbox\camelbox_uninstaller.exe
Create folder: C:\camelbox\share\pkglists
Extract: C:\camelbox\share\pkglists\_version_list.txt
Downloading: http://camelbox.googlecode.com/files/perl-5.10.0-core.2009.126.1.tar.lzma
Installer encountered a following fatal error;
'resolving hostname'; Aborting...
It didn't make much sense as I knew my name resolution was working
fine; I was able to get to Google to download camelbox. I speculated
that the proxy settings in use by the browser were not being used by
the installer, but there was no place to enter the proxy settings in
the installer. I ended up having to set the proxy settings in Internet
Explorer even though IE has never been used on this box and Firefox is
the default browser. The reason this is particularly frustrating is
that an install was not necessary; a zip file containing the perl
directory would have been perfect. I would recommend that a zip file
of the directory be added with instructions to choose one or the other
depending on you preference.
Brian Manning
The NSISdl library, which is part of the NSIS installer (that pretty
GUI setup.exe program you run to install Camelbox) uses the proxy
settings for IE; there are other file downloading libraries for NSIS,
but they had other issues (i.e. they would corrupt files).
Sometimes the error messages in NSIS and it's libraries don't match
the problem. I'm sure the NSIS people would accept patches (it's an
open source project) if you have suggestions for fixes or changes to
the contents of the error messages.
As far as zipfiles, Google Code has a 100 megabyte limit on individual
uploaded files. I'm not really interested in moving the project to
another project hosting service (Sourceforge, Berlios). If you're
volunteering space on a fast server for zipfile downloads, then I'm
all ears.
The other thing about zipfiles is the installer lets you choose how
much of Camelbox you want to install; you could just install Perl if
you wanted, or install everything if you wanted. You, as the end user
running the installer, get to choose. If I were to move everything to
zipfiles, I would need to build multiple zipfiles with different
combinations of software for each release just to get the same
functionality that the installer already provides.
If you really want to make a zipfile of Camelbox, install Camelbox on
a machine where you don't have to dance around a proxy server to
perform an install, then zip that install up and copy it from machine
to machine. Or copy the downloaded .lzma files from installing
Camelbox to your own (internal) webserver, then point the installer at
it, i.e. create your own mirror. This has been previously documented
in the "Installing Camelbox" wiki page [1].
Thanks,
Brian
[1] http://code.google.com/p/camelbox/wiki/InstallingCamelbox