[240] in ad-lib
GeoPac Distribution
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Grant Young )
Wed Mar 29 08:40:43 1995
To: opac-lib@MIT.EDU
Cc: efc@MIT.EDU
Date: Wed, 29 Mar 95 08:36:41
From: gyoung@MIT.EDU (Grant Young )
The Systems Office recommends at this point that Geopac be installed from a
copy of the installation diskette. So far we are only supporting it for
the opac-lib people who are working on setting it up for a more general
release.
We haven't examined the hotwire method that Eric suggests in any detail yet
but there are several factors that are making Geopac installation via ftp
(like hotwire) problematic. In addition there are factors that are making
general distribution inadvisable at this point.
1. Windows programs generally need to be installed from within Windows.
While it may seem tempting to simply copy files over from another
installation the way hotwire does, Windows installation protocols are
usually more subtle. Simply copying files usually doesn't update certain
system files. We discovered, for example, that Geopac's installation
checks the version information for certain software modules that are used
by other programs. If the modules already on your system are of a later
version than the Geopac versions the installation will skip installing
these files. While copying these files will allow Geopac to work, it may
break other applications that depend on later versions of these files.
Another problem with copying files is that icon information won't be
properly registered and upgrades in the future may not find the correct
information to do updates properly, leaving support issues for us to
correct.
Our initial look at the system did not uncover these problems and we
thought that a simple ftp scheme would work. We are less confident of that
at this point.
2. Geopac may not work properly with Lan Workplace Version 4.1. This means
that virtually all of the AST machines and many of the new Dells that were
upgraded will need to have their versions of Lan Workplace upgraded to work
properly. We haven't had a chance to test this rigorously yet, but
upgrading to Lan Workplace 4.2 may be a required step.
3. Machines that had earlier versions of Geopac may need some special
handling to make sure that old *.ini files are cleared out.
4. The Geopac server on emmy is currently very limited in it's potential
number of users. General release of Geopac may make maintaining access to
it for opac-lib members difficult. We are still in a debugging phase.
There also appear to be problems with the MIT license file.
In short, right now, to limit future problems with a general release of
Geopac and prevent widespread disappointment with it we would appreciate it
if distribution of Geopac were done on a very limited basis only to people
who need it to complete their work. That will make the general release and
distribution of Geopac easier and more satisfying for all concerned.
-- Grant Young, Libraries Systems Office.
