My original thought was, something like this isn't necessary, that the installation process had been twiddled down to changing, oh, 3 variables in a heavily documented config file and additional "power user" fancy things to do, if You Knew What You Were Doing. What could possibly be easier?
Oh, how wrong I was - and how I never knew how wrong I was, until I've gotten some feedback on the alternative of having an installer.
You can get a gist of how the installer works in this video:
Basically, you pop up a tar.gz distro and a helper script that just gets things all set, you run the helper script and fill in a few things in a form - most of which are pre-filled with Best Guesses. I am not breaking new ground, here.
BUT what I am doing is giving my users the patented PHP Xperience - and that's what they want:
You throw up some files, you visit some stuff via your browser, you set some params and you go zoom.
The problem with, "But, there's all these CPAN dependencies!!!" was solved a long time ago in this project by only using Pure Perl modules (gets limiting in some instances) and shipping the app with an already pre-filled app-specific perllib. This also is a huge headache and the shipped-perllib is always behind, but it's better than nothing. The cpan deps service has been heaven-sent for roll-your-own-manually folks. The, "But, there's Cool Things in CPAN to do Cool Things in your App!" wish is solved by just making these cools things optional. cPanel, which is what a lot of Very Cheap Web Hosts use as their platform has a web-based cpan installer, so it's even within a mortal's reach to use CPAN to do fun things.
Anyways: here is, after a month of having the installer, some reflections:
The support boards aren't devoid of installation questions, but they sure are a lot quieter.
There are users who are intimidated by the installer. I don't know how else I can make things easier and these users would also be intimidated by doing things manually (which is still an option). I used to be intimidated with oiling the chain on my bicycle, but it takes... I dunno, 5 minutes to learn what you need to do. I don't ever say, "Uh, Google-fu the base level how-to to, (for example) FTP a file", but I don't quite know what I need to say.
But, the other amount of users that were intimidated doing things manually, but can also figure out the installer is the majority. Which is great - solved the problem. Now, the questions are simply bizarre edge cases dealing with weird MySQL setups on questionable hosting accounts. Happy to help.
Since more people are having an easier time installing the program, I get the feeling that more people are installing the program, successfully, which is great. I don't have any hard facts for that one, sadly. There are a small amount of people that tell me they like the Hard Way of doing things, and Why would I ever change? You're ruining my flawed work flow!, and I don't really know what to tell those folks, except to try the new way, that there is a manual way and it's progress - babe. And also, the previous version is still available if you want Hell, again. I had shipped the installer as the only new feature of the current version, so there's nothing that was missing.
Another hunch I have is that my own services to install the program are dramatically down. I can certainly graph how many installs I do per day/month/whatever, but these numbers are affected by a number of things: the economy, other competing programs, if Burning Man was particularly amazing and how long it takes someone after Labor Day to decompress, etc. This is also fine for me, because I loathe having to install the program for people: it takes a lot of time. I would rather they do it, themselves.
When I do install the program? Guess what, I use the web-based installer too. It's that much better/faster/spiffier. I really wish I created the installer earlier, as the time it took to make the installer would have paid back sooner for the time it's saving me number. I would have like 10 years of that time back, instead of just a month, but whatchagonna do.
But I've now raised the bar on Easiness...es and have a new problem: people who found the installer easy to use, want to upgrade just as easy. 10 years of development of a program, especially when Year 0 I knew not of the ways of Perl and Year 10 I'm still very much an amateur with a Right Hemispherical controlled mind.... things are messy. The config file format sucks, for example. And I have ten years of versions people want to upgrade from.
Should be interesting.
Some notes on the design of the installer:
I basically decided to make the installer as separate from the main program as possible, meaning it has its own library files, it's own template files, it's own
It's written in a procedural design, because installations and configurations have steps. See? I just listed two of them. I made wrappers around things that deal with system calls - copying/removing files/directories, for example. I was thinking there could/would/should be edge cases for different OS's, but I really haven't found any, but I guess it still gives breathing room for someone much smarter than me to move in and make a better version of whatever I've botched. I did start with just using back ticks to system calls and replace those with perlish alternatives.
So. I'm not sure what stops all of us from making similar web-based installers for our web-apps. I am coming from a field (Art) and a preference for visual things, so I never really gotten a handle on system-admin type of tasks. The trend, it seems, in software is less, Give me as many options to roll my own doo-dad as I can have" and more, "Just freakin' work. And On my phone. When my 2-y/o uses it." I'm a little embarrassed at how much of the code I have is simply crap boilerplate to look up boring things about someone's environment to install. It seems that can all be sweeped under the floor and get some shared code. But then again, there's the rub, huh? If its shared code it's on CPAN, and then, how do you get the CPAN module, without a major compromise? And someone will be brilliant and write it in Moose (which is also, sincerely, brilliant) and there goes the baby, with the bathwater.
