[Info-vax] Installing and using GNV - some feedback and questions

[Simon Clubley]

On 2016-10-23, Craig A. Berry <craigberry at nospam.mac.com> wrote:
> On 10/22/16 7:49 PM, Simon Clubley wrote:
>>
>> The first thing I noticed is that the bash release notes could be
>> improved with a more detailed getting started overview at the beginning
>> of the release notes. It should be explicit in the bash kit release
>> notes what is required for a first time GNV user; the notes seem to
>> assume that you are updating an existing installation.
>
> It seems reasonable to me that release notes for one utility would not
> include starting from scratch instructions for the whole environment.
>

The thinking was that the overview to installing and configuring the GNV
environment should be documented somewhere within the kits themselves
and the shell, in the absence of a seperate install.txt document outside
of the kits, seemed like the most likely candidate for such instructions.

However, I'll see what the situation is after I first install the base kit.

>> For example, it should be listed that there are GNV startup procedures
>> in sys$startup: which need to be run and that the bash executable can
>> be found in gnv$gnu:[bin] after you have run the startup routines.
>>
>> I also had to manually run the command procedures to create the aliases
>> for the commands; this was not done automatically as part of the PCSI
>> installation routine. If you are expected to do this manually, this
>> should be part of the release notes as well.
>
> The fact that installing the utilities piecemeal may work around
> problems with the GNV kit itself (or POSIX root problems or whatever it
> is) is not really part of any plan. The kits are in fact intended to be
> installed on top of a GNV installation, though if you work your way
> through all the details as you have done, you can mostly function
> without it. The best available workaround is still just a workaround.
>

I've now come to realise that and it's clear that the base GNV kit
provides required infrastructure I wasn't aware of.

I was weighing up the warning about directory structure corruption
when installing the base GNV kit along with the website instructions
leading me to think the updated kits could be installed on a standalone
basis when I decided not to install the base kit.

I think an uninstall of the existing kits and an install of the base
kit plus the updated kits is in order.

I wonder if it would be a good idea to make the language on the
website more explicit about _requiring_ the base kit. At the moment,
the language makes it seem that the base kit installation is optional
which is clearly not what is intended.

>
>> The /etc/ directory does not exist in the GNV installation
>
> It does in mine.
>
> $ dir/security sys$common:[gnv]etc.dir
>
> Directory SYS$COMMON:[gnv]
>
> ETC.DIR;1            [SYSTEM]                         (RWE,RWE,RE,RE)
>
> Total of 1 file.
>
> This may be one of the things you are missing by only installing the
> utilities without installing GNV.
>

I agree and is yet another reason to install the base kit first.

Thanks Craig,

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
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