Pear installer API

[Michael Baessler <mb...@michael-baessler.de>]

Hi,

in the current UIMA API there are no classes provided to install a pear 
file out of the box. There are classes available that can be used, but 
they are not well documented and the user must know lots of details to 
get it work. I get more and more requests from users that run into that 
issue, so I think we should provide a simple way to install a pear file 
with an API so that it can be accessed from an application.

My thought was to have a PearInstaller class with an installPearPackage 
method in a way like

PearInstaller.installPearPackage(File installDir, File pearPackage, 
boolean verification, boolean installToRootDir, boolean localInstall)

to install pear packages easily within an application. The method may 
return a PackageBrowser object where the application can get all the 
details about
the installed pear package. For users that need more details about the 
installation they can use the underlying classes and methods as well but 
for
all the others I think that would help extremely.

I already have implemented such a pear installer method several times so 
I would start integrating my work if nobody disagree.

What do you think?

Thanks

-- Michael

Re: Pear installer API

[Michael Baessler <mb...@michael-baessler.de>]

Adam Lally wrote:
> +1 to having an easy way to install a PEAR file.  I guess I always
> thought we had that already in the InstallationController class.  This
> is the code you're referring to that's too complex and not well
> documented?
Yes that is the code, that I think nobody understands well. We can also 
try to cleanup this, but the main issue with that is, that
the code use an own message listener and do not throw any exception in 
case of an error. So for an application it is hard to find out
what really happens. So when we change that, I'm not sure what else we 
have to change in the Pear installer GUI. So my though was
to provide a new static method for installing a pear file ... but I will 
check that again so see what we can reuse.
> Maybe this can just be added as a static method on
> InstallationController?  And if the documentation on
> InstallationController can be improved, by all means let's do that.
>
Yes in the documentation we have many ToDos. There is nothing in that 
tells the user that there is an API and how that can be used.

-- Michael

Re: Pear installer API

[Adam Lally <al...@alum.rpi.edu>]

On 11/29/06, Michael Baessler <mb...@michael-baessler.de> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> in the current UIMA API there are no classes provided to install a pear
> file out of the box. There are classes available that can be used, but
> they are not well documented and the user must know lots of details to
> get it work. I get more and more requests from users that run into that
> issue, so I think we should provide a simple way to install a pear file
> with an API so that it can be accessed from an application.
>

+1 to having an easy way to install a PEAR file.  I guess I always
thought we had that already in the InstallationController class.  This
is the code you're referring to that's too complex and not well
documented?


> My thought was to have a PearInstaller class with an installPearPackage
> method in a way like
>
> PearInstaller.installPearPackage(File installDir, File pearPackage,
> boolean verification, boolean installToRootDir, boolean localInstall)
>

Maybe this can just be added as a static method on
InstallationController?  And if the documentation on
InstallationController can be improved, by all means let's do that.


-Adam