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[EP-tech] Re: EPrints for Windows?

On Fri, 2012-02-24 at 16:05 +0100, Miklos wrote:
> On 24/02/2012 15:06, Tim Brody wrote:
> > i, I've added an .msi bundle to 3.3.8
> Thanks, I'm downloading it now.
> > Can you provide a link to that Ball State report?
> http://mawest2.iweb.bsu.edu/eprints/An%20Issue%20with%20EPrints%20for%20Windows.pdf

Sums up my experience of the 3.0 port to Windows. Troublesome politics
attached to that effort ...

> > That said, most people end up running a Linux-based virtual machine 
> > under a Windows server. It tends to be less trouble, compared to 
> > trying to get all of the dependencies working under Windows.
> I was toying with the idea, but I want to try it first on my laptop 
> without having to install a virtual machine platform and then Linux. I 
> had tried a while ago with an older version, it was quite impossible to 
> do because it installed in default locations and/or assumed that other 
> software was in default locations with no way to specify alternatives. I 
> haven't had that kind of problems in years of installing free software, 
> I must say.

The .msi should be installable to other locations.

You can change the location of other dependencies through Perl
configuration files. Copy lib/syscfg.d/{executables,invocations}.pl to
cfg/cfg.d/ and edit them.
(stuff below lib/ is 'core' and will get overwritten by updates, cfg/
won't be overwritten)

On linux we can build 'RPM' or 'DEB' packages that install all of the
dependencies for you and so locations aren't an issue. Windows, by
comparison, is a real "wild west" where programs can end up anywhere on
the system. Given the complexity of the stack that EPrints sits on
(Apache, Perl, mod_perl, libxml, ImageMagick etc.) it is impossible to
provide a 1-click install on Windows.

All the best,
Tim.