How to install Unix-like software
How to install Unix-like software: A text adventure transcript.
Based on a true story. Or rather, several remarkably similar true stories.
You are sitting in front of a computer running OS X. You've decided that it's time to finally learn to use a tool you've been hearing a lot about: Glitzwhacker.
> Google Glitzwhacker
You find the Glitzwhacker home page. It says:
Glitzwhacker is the best tool for whacking glitzes. And it's easy to install! Just use the Phenoteletypist installer, like so, and you'll be up and running in seconds:
% phenot glitzwhacker -qrs -tuv
> type command line
phenot: Command not found.
> follow link to Phenoteletypist
The Phenoteletypist home page says:
Congratulations on your choice! Phenoteletypist is an awesome open-source package for installing glitzwhacking technologies. It will make your life incomparably easier! To set it up, just make sure you're running PHP 2.1 (or 3.8.2.22) and Python 5, and that you have the entire GNU suite installed in your /usr/local/phenot/tarantula directory; then you can use the excellent Mac OS X GUI interface.
> follow link to GUI interface
The link is broken.
> copy and paste link but change it to be absolute rather than relative
You have now downloaded the Mac installer for the GUI interface.
> run installer
The installer only works on the latest version of OS X, with makemixmasher and X11 installed.
> Google makemixmasher
makemixmasher is an OS X package manager package manager, for managing package manager packages.
> install makemixmasher
You follow the simple easy-to-understand makemixmasher installation procedure.
Ninety-eight lines of cryptic status messages scroll past.
The last line says "Error: Directory not writeable."
> sudo install makemixmasher
(After entering superuser password.) You follow the simple easy-to-understand makemixmasher installation procedure.
One hundred and two lines of cryptic status messages scroll past.
There is an error message here.
> read error message
It says "Installation failed. /bin/devel/nemo/whist/boojum, line 528: cmd() requires two arguments, not one. Error not found."
> Google error message
With quotation marks around it or without?
> with
No pages found.
> without
What?
> Google error message without quotation marks
There are five Stack Overflow pages here.
> read Stack Overflow pages
All of them describe error messages vaguely similar to yours but not quite the same.
> read answers
After half an hour of reading all of the proposed answers and painstakingly trying to follow their instructions, you have tried to install three other possibly-required systems with unusual names, but you have been unsuccessful at all of them.
None of the proposed answers seem likely to address your issue anyway.
It's possible that the main problem is that you have multiple versions of Python installed on your system and you're using the wrong one.
> examine Python installations
It's possible that the main problem is that you have multiple versions of Python installed on your system and you're using the wrong one.
> how would I find out?
What?
> run Python command to check which versions are installed
There is an error message here.
> read error message
It says "Stack trace: line overflow in /usr/share/mimsy/quetzalcoatl.py, line 32,768: unable to begin underflow processing. Please file a bug!"
> give up
What?
> quit
Would you indeed like to quit now?
> y
You have given up. Your score is 0 out of a total of 350 points, earning you the title of Rank Beginner. Come back and try again soon!
Postscript: I feel like I should explicitly note that I love open-source Linux-like software and I have a great deal of respect for the people who write it and who write instructions for using it, both of which I suspect are pretty thankless tasks. I suspect that the problems that I run into whenever I try to do this kind of thing are probably largely due to the vast number of different configurations that are out there; it's hard to write instructions and code that will really work everywhere. Some of the problems may also be due to my ignorance; there's obviously a lot that I don't know about this stuff.
Postpostscript: Given how many difficult installation processes I've encountered lately, I think it's worth specially mentioning one good experience: I had an astonishingly painless and fast Drupal installation experience recently, after I figured out that I could use the in-browser setup tool rather than reading through all of the unfortunately-hard-to-navigate setup instructions on the Drupal site. During the Drupal installation process, I didn't have to install anything else as a prereq, and other than having to set some permissions to globally writeable, I encountered no significant setbacks or errors. Yay, Drupal!
