Scripts to get Mercurial up and running on OSU CSE machines (SunOS and Linux)

UPDATE: A day after I posted this, Mercurial and Python (and Git) were added as optional subscriptions for users of these machines. So login to your desired machine and execute subscribe, then select MERCURIAL and whatever PYTHON is available (version 2.4.x or higher). Quit subscribe to save your changes, and re-login (of course, you can also do the same thing with GIT).

If you are a student, staff member, or faculty member in the Computer Science and Engineering department at The Ohio State University, you may have found yourself wanting to use a DVCS like Mercurial (hg) for SCM. Unfortunately, the version of Python that comes bundled on these enterprise systems prevents installing Mercurial, and some other issues on the SunOS system (like the lack of round() in the math library) prevent building a recent version of Python 2 that is needed for installing Mercurial. There are ways around this mess, and I have done my best to automate them within a script.

So give it a shot:

• install_hg_osu_cse_linux.sh – Linux install script (i.e., for faclogin.cse.ohio-state.edu and stdlogin.cse.ohio-state.edu)
• install_hg_osu_cse_sun.sh – SunOS install script (i.e., for facsun.cse.ohio-state.edu and stdsun.cse.ohio-state.edu)

Download the appropriate script to your desired target machine. Next, edit the script (e.g., using pico, nano, vi, or emacs) to verify that the INSTALLDIR location at the top of the script is what is desired – if you are going to run the script on both types of machines, your INSTALLDIR must be different in the two scripts. Then run the script on the machine (e.g., ./install_hg_osu_cse_sun.sh) and follow the instructions. The script is interactive, and so you will be able to manage its behavior as it runs. Be sure to follow its instructions at the end about setting your PATH and PYTHONPATH; if you ran the script on both types of machines, you will have to be clever in your script RC/profile file to set these differently based on the machine you are on – I recommend using uname to detect the different machine type.

After that, you should have a working Mercurial. In the Linux script, you may adjust the Mercurial and Python 2 versions downloaded, but in the SunOS script, you need to leave the Python 2 version alone as later versions of Python will not build on the SunOS machines (due to the problems with the old math library). On either machine, if you are adventurous, you can use the installed Mercurial to clone the stable Mercurial repository (hg-stable) and keep your installed Mercurial up-to-date with the very latest stable version.

Installing docutils for Mercurial (rst2man and rst2html)

If you're building Mercurial from its source, you might notice that the latest versions are using reStructuredText to markup their documentation. Hence, you'll need to install docutils. Additionally:

• You'll have to install the rst2man tool that is presently only available in the docutils "Sandbox," which you have to download separately.
• You'll have to make sure you have the new rst2man.py tool accessible in your PATH as rst2man.
• You'll have to make sure you have the included rst2html.py tool accessible in your PATH as rst2html.

So it's no surprise that yet-another-Python-related-adventure is yet-another-Python-related-headache. Here's how to get up and running. Things should get substantially simpler if and when docutils starts including rst2man as part of their standard distribution (however, you'll probably still have to make the simlinks unless Mercurial's installer is able to call the rst scripts with their .py extension). Meanwhile, here are some steps that will hopefully get you (the UNIX or Mac/OS X user) moving in the right direction.

• First, go to the docutils website and download the docutils snapshot as well as the docutils sandbox snapshot.
• tar zxf those tarballs to extract the docutils source code. That should give docutils and sandbox directories.
• Copy sandbox/manpage-writer/tools/rst2man.py to somewhere in your PATH (e.g., /usr/local/bin/rst2man.py or ~/bin/rst2man.py if you have ~/bin in your PATH).
• Create a symbolic link in your PATH from the rst2man.py you just placed there to rst2man. For example, symlink /usr/local/bin/rst2man.py to /usr/local/bin/rst2man by doing ln -s rst2man.py rst2man in the /usr/local/bin directory.
• Copy sandbox/manpage-writer/docutils/writers/manpage.py to docutils/docutils/writers/manpage.py.
• In the docutils directory, run python setup.py install (for a global installation) or python setup.py install --home ~ (for a home installation).
• Copy docutils/rst2html.py to somewhere in your PATH (e.g., /usr/local/bin/rst2html.py or ~/bin/rst2html.py).
• Create a symbolic link in your PATH from the rst2html.py you just placed there to rst2html. For example, ln -s rst2html.py rst2html inside your /usr/local/bin or ~/bin directory.
• Fetch the latest version of Mercurial and build it. Assuming you have all of the other dependencies, it should build OK.

Of course, YMMV, but I hope that at least helps get you on your way.