[moneydance] Installing Moneydance on Suse 10.1

[Ric Werme]

Random notes worth logging before I forget them:

I recently built a new system to augment/replace and old system that
mostly runs just fine, but would be a bear to update in place without
disrupting everything it's running.

The new system has mostly the latest software on it.  That's
guaranteed weeks of getting things back up to speed!  I also figured it
was about time to update Moneydance since I've been running MD 2005,
build 412.  I barely remember my original Moneydance installation
as a bit confusing but not to bad.  Things may not have changed much
up to today, but things left me more confused than the last time.

Is it worth putting the following in the trac system?

Downloading went okay, the system and Firefox 2 figured out my system is
Linux.  However, the download wound up in ~/Desktop/moneydance_linux_x86.sh
due to that's how Firefox likes to do these things.  Do I run the shell script
from there?  Copy it to ~/Moneydance?  There's no README or INSTALL file or
web page to say and the comments in the shell script aren't very useful.

Eventually I copy it to ~/Moneydance and run from there.  As me?  As root?
Beats me, so I look at the shell script and get fairly confused quickly.
Running it as myself fails anyway, saying that "No suitable Java Virtual
Machine could be found on your system."

Well, okay.  Last time around I went along figuring that letting Moneydance
load a JVM would leave things working okay.  This time I decided to fight
back a little.  I found several Java directories, but the only populated
one was /usr/lib/jvm/jre1.5.0_09 .  I don't think anything really links to
it, on the system.  The shell script doesn't include /usr/lib/jvm in 
$common_jvm_locations, so that why the script gave up.  (It did continue
and asked if I wanted to download a jre.)

So I changed the top of the script from:

  # INSTALL4J_JAVA_HOME_OVERRIDE=

to:

  # ejw Several empty directories exist, this is populated.
  INSTALL4J_JAVA_HOME_OVERRIDE=/usr/lib/jvm/jre1.5.0_09

Along the way, I added an extra "echo" command to check the values of
key variables.  Both those changes caused:

  gunzip: sfx_archive.tar.gz: not in gzip format

  I am sorry, but the installer file seems to be corrupted.
  If you downloaded that file please try it again. If you
  transfer that file with ftp please make sure that you are
  using binary mode.

That turns out to be due to the script knowing what line number the
data starts on:

  tail -n +382 "$prg_dir/${progname}" > sfx_archive.tar.gz 2> /dev/null

I guess some post-processor added the line number.  Yuck, I probably would
have created a uuencoded file and copied or extracted that.  At any rate,
changing +382 to +384 let me extract things and start the installer.
Oh, there's an installer, it's not just a tar file, and it doesn't care
where it's run from.  It does care who it runs as.  So rerun from my root
window and let it install to /opt/moneydance and create a symlink from
/usr/local/bin/.  (I later decided to create a launcher button, not too hard,
especially after I read in a forum about
/opt/moneydance/.install4j/Moneydance.png .)

The above is kind of rambling, my main point is that it sure would be
nice to have an INSTALL or README file that describes the installation
process for the system type.  The file should describe:

1) Download to a file.
2) Execute "sudo sh <file>" or execute from root window because it will
   affect system directories.  Note that most of the installation work is
   in the graphical installer, not the shell script.
3) Instructions on creating a launcher and how to run Moneydance without
   invoking a launcher should be included.  (N.B. you can't expect people
   to see the online docs until MD is running!)
4) I was surprised that executing "/opt/moneydance/Moneydance foo.md"
   didn't open demo.md.  It worked in MD 2005, IIRC.  File open defaulted
   to ~/Documents, not the current directory.

Basically, there really needs to be something that walks a new user
through each step.  Heck, old users too!

I installed a few extensions, that went fine, though that process could
be improved, especially during initial configuration when one would
download several.

I may be able to try out the new MD with my real data tomorrow.
Oh boy, printer setup.  I can hardly wait....

   -Ric Werme