Forum OpenACS Development: Re: Ideas for easier installation of OpenACS

RE: ....But when I hear users asking for a download of OpenACS that just runs from a static install, I wonder how much they actually value the product....

Tom,

There is nothing to value if you don't know what it is. ;) I did pass by this project multiple times in the last 3 or so years but never got to the point of installing it. The reason it attracted me is that it is TCL based. I like TCL a lot and was looking for a web/application server that was using it. My options were tclhttpd, aolserver and recently, wub. I did use tclhttpd for a while and liked it for it's simplicity. Then I heard about the great performance of aolserver, so I started looking around and naturally, many links were pointing to openacs. BTW, your name is everywhere where there is talk about aolserver/openacs. I don't know how you find the time. :)
Anyway, I got close to installing several times. I was able to compile Aolserver in the past but it seems there was always something missing that I needed and when I tried to add the missing component, I either got a dead download link, or an empty web page or I can't compile something. I have been trucking and using Linux since it was distributed on floppies and do have some experience with compiling problems. In the past I did try to troubleshoot, try to find missing files, fix dependency problems etc. It is because of that experience that I am reluctant to do so anymore, especially because it is so easy to install applications now days. You never know if it will be 5 minutes or 5 days to compile the application, so, naturally, the excitement isn't there. Well, your remark above intrigued me so I decided to look around for a working installation and found this:
http://www.jsequeira.com/projects/oasisvm/
It's a virtual machine with a complete installation of OpenACS and .LRN. I played with it for several hours and found it to be absolutely amazing. I do sincerely wish I discovered it years ago. I would have known how to use it by now. But it looks like I am hooked. :) Thanks to all the developers for the great work. And thanks to everyone who tried to help. BTW, that virtual machine link should be somewhere on the front page of openacs.org

http://www.jsequeira.com/projects/oasisvm/

Hi Vic,
Yesterday I discovered something similar to what your last post described. For the last couple of days I've been trying to get a native Windows installation of dotLRN up and running (to make a long story short: I had no end of trouble). There was a whole bunch of tips in the fora that I found but I kept getting presented with various flavour of difficulty.

In the end I thought, 'okay, so it's going to be Linux', so I went about finding a virtual machine for my home PC. After a false start, I settled on VMware and on a hunch I Googled (I think) VMWare and dotLRN in the same query which took me to here: http://media.wu-wien.ac.at/download/vdotlrn

Installation and figuring out how to drive the download was dead easy, just as easy as installing some of the other open source environments. If this was linked to on the main install page it could have saved a couple of days of head scratching. This said, I'm happy where I've got to so far in my dotLRN adventure.

Chris