[okl4-developer] Magpie problems

[Nicholas FitzRoy-Dale]

Espen Skoglund wrote:
> Is anyone actually developing or using Magpie at all?  I thought I
> would give it a try, but after spending a whole day trying to get
> anything to work I'm giving up on it.

Hi Espen,

I'm sorry to hear you had so many problems. There are two main ones that 
caused the frustration:

  1) Installation. Magpie is mostly used and tested within the OKL build 
system, and is not installed system-wide. It can be run in-place without 
the build system by setting PYTHONPATH appropriately:

export PYTHONPATH=$PYTHONPATH:/path/to/magpie-parsers/src:/path/to/magpie/

  The installer referred to in the documentation is obsolete. I have 
updated the documentation to reflect this. There should be no problem 
with running Magpie in-place -- it's how I use it.

  2) Broken head branch. While the hg repository version is frequently 
stable, it is not always stable -- I have to recommend a released (OKL) 
version for stability. That said, I have committed a patch to the hg 
repository which fixes the bug you reported below.

We use Magpie daily as part of the OKL build process, so you can expect 
it to be supported. I hope knowing a bit more about the context in which 
it's used here eases the frustration and you have better results next 
time. Either way, I'm keen to hear about Magpie problems so please let 
me know.

- Nicholas FitzRoy-Dale