At Thu, 9 Oct 2008 14:05:06 -0400,
Ken Irwin <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
> Hi folks,
> 
> I've got a homegrown piece of software that I'll be presenting at a 
> conference in a few weeks (to track title & call-number request 
> histories using III's InnReach module). I'm trying to package it up in 
> such a way that other users will be able to use the software too, and 
> I've never done this before.
> 
> Is there any open-source or otherwise freely-available software to 
> handle the installation of a LAMP-type product:
> 
> - displaying readme type information until everything's set up
> - creating databases
> - creating data tables (in this case, with a dynamic list of fields 
> depending on some user input)
> - loading up some pre-determined data into database tables
> - editing the config file variables
> 
> I could make this up myself, but I wonder if someone has genericized 
> this process. (I'm particularly concerned about how to effectively 
> pre-load the data tables, not assuming the user has command-line mysql 
> access.)

This is pretty generic advice, but you should have a look at Karl
Fogel’s book, Producing open source software, available online [1],
particularly the chapter on ‘Packaging’. This provides a somewhat
high-level view of the mechanics of packaging free software for
release. It will not help with writing scripts to set up databases,
which you will probably have to do by hand.

best,
Erik Hetzner

1. <http://producingoss.com/> 



;; Erik Hetzner, California Digital Library
;; gnupg key id: 1024D/01DB07E3