[rt-users] Documentation for installing extensions

[Jo Rhett]

On Dec 15, 2014, at 5:07 PM, Alex Vandiver <alexmv at bestpractical.com> wrote:
> I've just verified that all of BPS' packages that we list on the
> Extensions page contain an INSTALLATION section which is up-to-date,
> which I believe removes any necessity for common knowledge.
...
> Do you think that that, combined with
> https://github.com/bestpractical/rt/blob/4.2/installing-extensions/docs/extensions.pod
> will sufficiently help new users?

I like that page a lot :)  I would recommend stating the 4.2 practice first, unless you recommend 4.0…  always prefer and mention first the version you recommend.

I think that a link to that new extensions pod added to every module (e.g. in your template) for the Extensions will help significantly, especially in situations where the author didn’t making an INSTALLATION section.

Furthermore, lazy or busy authors might make an INSTALLATION section and link to this document now that it exists :)

> The Module::Install::RTx machinery, loaded from inc/ by the Makefile.PL,
> takes care of checking the the standard install locations for RT, and
> setting the installation prefix accordingly.  It is part of the package
> itself, and not part of my environment.  In fact, if it _fails_ to find
> your RT.pm, it should be prompting you:
> 
>    $ perl Makefile.PL
>    Cannot find the location of RT.pm that defines $RT::LocalPath in:
>    [snip contents of @INC]
>    Path to directory containing your RT.pm:
> 
> ...whereupon providing the path will cause it to carry on, and install
> appropriately in your non-standard RT prefix.  Hence, if running 'perl
> Makefile.PL' is failing for you, I'd be quite curious to see how, so we
> can fix it.

It failed exactly that way for me, even though we did use the stock directory. On a fresh installation on a fresh node with nothing on it but CentOS 6 with the provided Perl and having followed your instructions for installing all dependencies from CPAN.

> We test things like this in clean VMs explicitly to prevent that.  

Awesome. My apologies for the assumption. Working in Operations I deal with a lot of developers who forget to do that, and I assumed it in my reply. Sorry.

-- 
Jo Rhett
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Skype: jorhett
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