[Bigjob-users] BigJob installation page comments

[Yaakoub El Khamra]

> Hi Yaakoub,
> I understand your concern regarding the user-level Python
> installation. The documentation just explains how a user can install
> BigJob in user-space. If possible, BJ should be installed in
> system-space (e.g. the CSA space). It is as easy as typing:
>
> easy_install bigjob
Yes, I will install it in the CSA on ranger/lonestar for everyone to
use and will create a module as well. This will not always work
though: the easy_install requires root access and if a user wants to
try bigjob on their own machine/cluster and do not have root access,
they are pretty much stuck.

The same applies if they use the vritualenv. The bootstrap is what I
used which works fine. The SVN checkout should be added as a possible
installation mechanism.


>
> This will also pull in all dependencies.
>
> Unfortunately, BJ is often not installed in system-space. The
> bootstrap script can install BJ in any location using any Python that
> you would like to use:
>
> <path-to-python-of-your-choice>/bin/python boostrap-bigjob.py <target-location>
>
> The script will create a virtualenv for BJ. This is better both for
> the user, which is only required to use this one command line, and for
> the development/maintainability of BigJob. If a user has the
> particular requirement of using a system-level Python, he can also go
> through the pain of manually installing the BJ package and messing
> around with the PYTHONPATH. To do so, BJ needs to checked out of the
> SVN; then just execute:
>
> python setup.py install --prefix=<target-dir>
>
> We will add an explanation of this option to the web page.
>
> Hope that explains the design decision.
>
> Best,
> Andre
>
> On Fri, Oct 14, 2011 at 10:46 PM, Yaakoub El Khamra <yelkhamra at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I have a few comments regarding the bigjob documentation, particularly
>> the install page:
>> http://faust.cct.lsu.edu/trac/bigjob/wiki/install
>>
>> A fair amount of the instructions are regarding softenv, which is
>> phased out on xsede/teragrid resources. You might want to move this
>> down a bit.
>>
>> The easy_install and virtualenv are not installed by default on most
>> xsede/teragrid machines. This means the user will run into errors
>> trying to install that way.
>>
>> The bootstrap works but needs tweaking. I need to be able to specify
>> my own python for bigjob to use and install it in my own location as
>> opposed to a .python directory in $HOME. There are many problems with
>> having python code installed to $HOME, mostly relating to performance,
>> so let's not do that.
>>
>> Otherwise, the documentation is fine in my opinion.
>>
>> Regards
>> Yaakoub El Khamra
>>
>