[LON-CAPA-dev] Re: Installing development version of LC

[Stuart Raeburn]

Mark,

> I've got my development machine turned back on and am looking to install
> the latest development version of LC.
>
> (1) Is it in reasonably functional form?

Yes, CVS bleeding edge was used for a couple of courses at MSU in a  
Limited Field Trial in a standalone cluster last semester. The same  
will occur this semester.

There is also a separate multi-domain standalone cluster (the one used  
at the 2009 conference).  The "msu" domain in that cluster is in  
available to MSU Faculty and Staff to automatically request accounts  
and create courses and communities while they evaluate 3.0.  The  
"testdrive" domain in the same cluster is available to everyone else.

As regards installation on your own server, at present you will need  
to use CVS checkout to get the latest development version to install.

cd path_to_loncapa_repo/loncom/build
cvs update -A -d

and then:

cd loncom/build
make clean
make build
make install

You can also use make tardist instead of make install to create a  
tarball if you wish to install from that.

The tarball (loncapa-unstable.tar.gz) which was historically built  
nightly from CVS HEAD nightly and made available via  
install.loncapa.org is outdated.  Rebuilding of that unstable tarball  
will likely resume once 2.9 has been released.

>
> (2) Are there any packages that I need to have installed beyond the   
> packages for the current release version?
>

The version of LONCAPA-prerequisites which will be required for the  
long delayed 2.9 (which doesn't include the new interface changes),  
and ultimately 3.0 (which does) is 1-17.  Currently this is available  
(as are any new dependencies unavailable in core repositories for the  
distro) in the msu/testing repos on install.loncapa.org for some  
distros. CentOS 5 is amongst them.  Support for other distros is being  
added incrementally.

>
> (3) Any other caveats?
>
> I'm looking to install it to get a feel for the interface changes.

Localization files are not up to date, but I doubt that is an issue  
for you.  Also documentation is not presently up to date.

Stuart Raeburn
MSU LON-CAPA group


>
> Mark
> --