Re: Next fight with teacup

On Jan 3, 8:27 am, Gerhard Reithofer <gerhard.reitho...@tech-
edv.co.at> wrote:
Is it possible to get all active objects installed or to a local
repository to have a fixed starting point for all modules?

A number of us have been away on holiday for a bit - be patient and,
if you've not gotten the answers you seek in a couple more weeks, try
gathering the unanswered questions up and starting a new thread. There
may be too many messages posted during holiday (particularly with all
the spam) for someone to be certain they've read everything.

Now, some "good news/bad news" for what I think you are attempting.
The good news is that there is at least one additional person on the
internet who may be in a similar situation as you - so you are not
alone. The bad news is that I don't know the answers to many of your
questions.

I suspect that some of your questions will need refinement - maybe
after answers responses to some of your questions, that will help you
reach more detailed questions. At that point, two additional avenues
you have for pursuing your questions is the activetcl mailing list and
posting bug/feature enhancement requests on the activestate.com teacup
category of service requests.

I hope you don't mind if I cover some fundamentals. You probably
understand all of this already, but by covering it, I hope to make
certain we both are on "the same page" of understanding.

When one installs a new ActiveTcl, there is, in fact, a "fixed
starting point" with regards to locally installed packages that comes
in the installation. That set of extensions has varied in number over
the past half dozen releases.

After you've got ActiveTcl installed, you can then, via teacup,
install additional packages using "teacup install". Putting the list
of commands into a script file would allow you to install a fixed set
of additional packages. Additionally, if your list is pretty
comprehensive, by executing the two commands:

teacup update-self
(which updates the teacup command that is used to interact with the
repository)
teacup update
(which installs all uninstalled packages, as well as all updates to
already installed packages)

you would have "all active objects" from the repository.

Information about teacup and its various commands can be read at
http://wiki.tcl.tk/teacup


The solution I'm searching for (and I will find!) is a method to get new
machines installed with different sets of "fixed software collections" -
but exactly predefined os environment - in the most short time. The same
applies to changes in installations, environments and configurations.
Only one of these environment prerequesites are oracle client libraries,
as many of the administration information are stored in Databases.

I don't know if I understand everything desired here. I can tell you
that the oracle libraries are not available within the teacup
repository. I don't believe any non-tcl libraries (such as libz,
libpng, etc.) are currently available though this database.

I suspect what you are wanting (as do I) is the means to spend a bit
of time up front to create a tcl repository, then make that repository
available on more than one machine, in an environment where the
machines are not set up to share file folders/file systems.

If the machines can all access a common file server, then on Unix/
Linux machines you could install the activetcl on that file server,
install the set up modules, then just make certain that everyone is
accessing tcl from that common location. I've never seen ActiveTcl
install things into /etc or any machine specific location. I _have_
seen, however, ActiveTcl install a bit of information in the home
directory of the person doing the install. This results in that login
id needing to be the one that performs the teacup update type
operations.

I do something along this lines on Unix/Linux systems.

However, it is my understanding that things are a bit more complex on
Windows machines. When ActiveTcl installs on Windows, there are local
registry settings that are also installed. While someone could set up
a shared folder for Tcl on Windows, I think, some kind of script would
need to be developed to create the association between .tcl (.tk or
whatever) to the location of the tclsh interpreter.
There might need to be some additional associations created of which I
am unaware.

I am currently not aware of any freely distributable method, however,
of creating an automatic local installation of a pre-installed set of
additional extensions.

I suspect that one might be able to negotiate a contract with
ActiveState to address this sort of need.


The main challenges are:
 * The "fixed software collections" becomes changed frequently (I assume
   all 1-6 months,  but could also stay for a longer time).

Unfortunately, if you do not use shared folders, then it looks, to me,
like some method of either running teacup update or pushing out files
to the appropriate directories after getting the initial isntall
performed.

 * The 1st installation is done by external people, which do not have  
   much software knowledge.

The ActiveTcl installation wizard shouldn't be too bad for such
people. Just write a document carefully detailing what should be done
with each step of the installation process.

 * The changes must be applied on existing machines automatically or by
   a minimum of human interaction (at least a minimum of unproductivity
   time for the user).

The initial installation should be the primary interaction a user
needs. After that, creating a script that runs teacup that runs as
some sort of scheduled task (ala cron or task scheduler), which
captures all output and mails it back to a central administrator who
can confirm that the script was successful), should be sufficient .

 * It should work for WinXP 32- and 64bit (Vista shall be tested too -
   but currently no definitive requirement), AIX 32- and 64bit, Linux
   32- and 64bit and Solaris 10 (and maybe 8?).

Write the script in Tcl, and at least that code should work in all the
environments in which ActiveTcl is supported. However, the means of
getting the code to run regularly is going to be platform or at least
major os platform specific.


 * There MUST be support for rarely changes of products or
   configurations in a very short time.

I'm uncertain of what you have in mind here, but teacup install or
teacup remove runs relatively quickly - but unless you are using a
shared folder/file system, it does have to run all all of your
hundreds of machines.

soon (or can be fixed by myself - all is open source!). The teacup
repository does not offer a method (or more exact, I don't know one) to
create an installation with a fixed set of objects (stored on files or
databases) automatically, etc.

Well, teacup install can be used to create a local tcl repository of
external extensions. The trick is how to make that repository
available to hundreds of machines. A shared folder/file system is
certainly one way. If that is not an option, then you would need to
work with ActiveState. I believe I have read references in some of
their releases about a repository copy that a company can contract to
receive containing a snapshot copy of the repository. At that point,
you would then need to work out how to make that CD available to your
hundreds of machines, which, to me, seems to be a tough thing to do.

I have a similar need. I have several hundred windows machines onto
which, ideally, I'd like to deploy an activetcl distribution via
active directory. I have not had time to investigate what that would
involve. I too would rather not have the users running the default
installation wizard or the teacup update.



Finally the company, for which I'm evaluating this, has nothing to do
with software development, the workstations do not have direct access to
the internet and many tasks must be done with administration permissions.
The only objective is, to manage (complex and spezialized) software and
software components, access rights and working environments for 1000+
users.

We have similar restrictions.

Please let me know what you discover.

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Next fight with teacup
    ... repository to have a fixed starting point for all modules? ... IMHO it's too early for attending the activetcl mailing lists, ... install additional packages using "teacup install". ... The ActiveTcl installation wizard shouldn't be too bad for such ...
    (comp.lang.tcl)
  • Re: Next fight with teacup
    ... But what I had to do is to delete the complete 32-bit distribution, install the new version, install all necessary modules via teacup and now it works. ... As I wrote a few month ago, I still have the problem howto deploy a "battery included package" and changes must be done on very much machines in a short time. ... The repository idea of teacup maybe a good basis, but I MUST also have the tools and methods to "manage" the software automatically. ...
    (comp.lang.tcl)
  • Re: Is ActiveTcl 8.5 release to be used as it is?
    ... I just tried to upgrade to ActiveTcl 8.5. ... I recall that these packages were missing also from ActiveTcl 8.5 betas, ... I thought that I had to use the teacup interface to retrive ... This is a fully acceptable install, as 8.5 can use 8.4's libraries, ...
    (comp.lang.tcl)
  • Re: Teacup and ActiveState Tcl...
    ... I found out that the base install comes with almost no support ... I am guessing that this was about linking the ActiveTcl tclsh to the ... know about each other, 'teacup link make', however without the text I ... while still root that packages could be 'required'. ...
    (comp.lang.tcl)
  • Re: Is ActiveTcl 8.5 release to be used as it is?
    ... I uninstalled ActiveTcl 8.4 and installed AtciveTcl 8.5. ... I recall that these packages were missing also from ActiveTcl 8.5 betas, but I assumed the omission was due to the beta state. ... Initially, I thought that I had to use the teacup interface to retrive them from a repository, but my attempts failed to install anything, because the teacup exe tries to execute "tclsh.exe" which is not included in ActiveTcl 8.5. ...
    (comp.lang.tcl)