Supporting tools to be removed from source distribution

[Janne Härkönen]

Hello,

The Robot Framework source distribution has thus far also included a
number of supporting tools, listed in the Wiki[1].

However, some of these tools will be incorporated directly in the
installation [2], [3] and we decided to remove the others from the
source distribution altogether. The other tools will continue to be
available as separate downloads from the Wiki page mentioned above.

If this causes you any inconvenience, let us know, and we'll figure
out a solution.

[1] http://code.google.com/p/robotframework/wiki/SupportingTools#Tools_distributed_with_Robot_Framework
[2] http://code.google.com/p/robotframework/issues/detail?id=801
[3] http://code.google.com/p/robotframework/issues/detail?id=1028

thanks,
--J

--
Janne Härkönen | http://reaktor.fi
http://twitter.com/#!/janneharkonen

[Lars Nordin]

Just to be clear, you are saying that all the tools listed in [1] - from libdoc.py to statuschecker.py - will now be included in each RF tar ball?
[1] http://code.google.com/p/robotframework/wiki/SupportingTools#Tools_distributed_with_Robot_Framework

That would be great; we only run RF on Linux but having all those support tools included make my job easier.

[Pekka Klärck]

2012/1/18 Lars Nordin <lno...@internap.com>:

> Just to be clear, you are saying that all the tools listed in [1] - from libdoc.py to statuschecker.py - will now be included in each RF tar ball?
> [1] http://code.google.com/p/robotframework/wiki/SupportingTools#Tools_distributed_with_Robot_Framework
>
> That would be great; we only run RF on Linux but having all those support tools included make my job easier.

No, we are saying that they won't be included anymore. Currently they
are included, but we decided to remove them because they are also
available separately and most people use source distribution just to
get the source. Tools themselves don't make the distribution that big
but the included User Guide and Quick Start Guide do. Including them
when we expect people to install the source distribution more and more
often with `pip install robotframework` doesn't make much sense. The
source distribution is now 2.5 MB and I expect it to be < 1 MB when it
contains only the source.

Notice also that in the future some of the tools distributed with RF
will actually be included into the installation. The next 2.7 alpha
will have old robotidy tool available as `python -m robot.tidy` [2]
and the plan is to make libdoc available similarly [2] before the 2.7
final release.

[1] http://code.google.com/p/robotframework/issues/detail?id=801
[2] http://code.google.com/p/robotframework/issues/detail?id=1028

Cheers,
.peke
--
Agile Tester/Developer/Consultant :: http://eliga.fi
Lead Developer of Robot Framework :: http://robotframework.org

[Lars Nordin]

I see. I've always used the tar.gz file to install on Linux using "install.py".
My vote is to keep the tools in the "source" distribution but remove the user guides and make them separate.

[Taylor, Martin]

We always build our own RF installation from the source code. I use Beyond Compare with each new source release to diff the RF source vs. our source in AccuRev and then copy the necessary files into our source control system. Currently the main "extra tool" we use is libdoc.py and we always have to remember to copy this into the Scripts folder manually, since the RF installer doesn't do this. So it would help us greatly if this tool was integrated into the RF source code and install process. We'll accept the one-time "pain" of changing all our scripts that use libdoc.py to match the new command-line invocation style.

Thanks,
Martin

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[Pekka Klärck]

2012/1/18 Lars Nordin <lno...@internap.com>:

> I see. I've always used the tar.gz file to install on Linux using "install.py".

You can already now use `easy_install robotframework` for installing
the latest version or something like `easy_install
robotframework==2.6.3` to get a specific version. This command will
download the source distribution, unpack it, and then install the
framework. To get easy_install command, you need to install SetupTools
pacakge. On Debian based distros like Ubuntu you can do that e.g. with
`apt-get install python-setuptools`. Notice that easy_install works
also on Windows.

There's also a newer, and better, installation tool for Python
packages called pip <http://pip-installer.org/>. Unfortunately Robot's
current installation hacks prevent using it, but as soon as RF 2.7 is
out, you can use it like `pip install robotframework`. One of the
great enhancements of pip is that also `pip uninstall robotframework`
works as expected. The easiest way to install pip, assuming you have
easy_install installed, is running `easy_install pip`. Also pip works
fine on Windows.

> My vote is to keep the tools in the "source" distribution but remove the user guides and make them separate.

We can consider that as tools don't really take that much extra space.
I added a note about this into the issue about shrinking the source
distribution:
http://code.google.com/p/robotframework/issues/detail?id=1037