Manual installation vs installation script. Documentation ?

[sudara]

Loving Dave! Thank you!

Just wanted to officially log: it would be nice to have docs that specify how to do a manual install.

I personally don't like executing shell scripts without first understanding them, which then adds some friction/time to getting up and running. I think docs would do a good job of guiding the user as to the "whys" of certain things. And it doesn't look like that many things need to happen.

This is what was going through my head:

• What exactly will be installed?
• Is this going to change my system python version?
• Where exactly is code being added to my system?
• Will my lldbinit get overwritten or concatenated to?

On MacOS python>=3.12 installed with Homebrew is known to come with Tcl 9.0 which breaks matplotlib
If you have such an installation I recommend installing a 3.10 or 3.11 version of python-tk

When running the script, I wasn't sure if installing this would upgrade or downgrade my python (another argument for doing it manually, I think).

[sudara]

BTW, despite my whining, I got setup in < 20 min 🎉

[maxmarsc]

Quite a few things happens in the installation script :

• python interpreter checks (version, tkinter, venv, tcl version)
• venv creation and setup
• automatic binding to detected debuggers
• management script installation

Dave will not install any package system wide, no homebrew, no macports, no apt-get... It might only suggest you what's missing.

It will create a dedicated venv under ~/.dave and do everything there.

It will add some content to your .gdbinit/.lldbinit to be able to start automatically. It should not delete any content previously there.

I had feedbacks that too many installation instructions are a drawback ^^" not everyone is confident with CLI

But I do get your point, so I tried to make the installation script well documented. So that people will get a good idea on what it does. Do you maybe think a detailled section in a FAQ would be a nicer place to get details ?

I'll leave this open for a few weeks so people can give their opinions on the matter

[sudara]

My preference would be a Manual Installation section in the README (or in another markdown file). Happy to help contribute.

[maxmarsc]

The downside is maintenance, We have to make sure the document is always fully up-to-date with the installation script.

Though hopefully at some point it should stop evolving 😅

[maxmarsc]

Quick update here, this issue has not been forgotten, simply not on top of my TODO-LIST.

I plan to change several things in DAVE:

• change the requirements to move to Qt from Tkinter
• use pyinstaller for easier distribution

Because these two would affect how to install DAVE I'll delay this issue until these has been solved to avoid writing a guide to a soon deprecated doc.