make check: check for parallel/wget/curl, fix #157

[kba]

No description provided.

[stweil]

Then an error would be reported like this:

/bin/sh: 1: sem: not found

Suggested change

	.PHONY: all modules check clean help show always-update
	check:
	@sem --version >/dev/null && echo "ok - parallel installed"
	.PHONY: all modules check clean help show always-update
	check:
	@sem --version >/dev/null 2>&1 || echo "error - please run 'sudo make deps-ubuntu' or install GNU parallel manually"

[stweil]

I have no strong opinion regarding the success message, so ok - parallel installed could be added for the success case if desired.

[bertsky]

I don't see the point. You already get appropriate error messages now when one of these tools is missing. No need to duplicate that under a new target. It will only confuse users. Other missing dependencies will produce errors when due, respectively.

[stweil]

As we already have hard dependencies on wget, cleaning the current code would be reasonable - no need to support curl as well.

[kba]

I don't see the point. You already get appropriate error messages now when one of these tools is missing. No need to duplicate that under a new target. It will only confuse users. Other missing dependencies will produce errors when due, respectively.

I see this more as a documentation feature. If users do encounter problems, you could ask them: "What does make check say?" to quickly exclude missing dependencies. I'd say that is easier than capturing make all output and spot the error.

[kba]

> As we already have hard dependencies on wget, cleaning the current code would be reasonable - no need to support curl` as well.

Since the $(WGET) macro checks wget --version, then curl --version, make check should also check in that order. The || should stop early if wget is available and test whether curl is available only if wget isn't.

[bertsky]

I see this more as a documentation feature. If users do encounter problems, you could ask them: "What does make check say?" to quickly exclude missing dependencies. I'd say that is easier than capturing make all output and spot the error.

What do you gain? – Nothing. Whether wget and parallel is missing is already reported by make all – at the very bottom (unless running parallel and for the first time).

What do you loose? – All the other possible sources of error. You'll usually have to ask for make all output anyway.

[stweil]

Cleaning the WGET macro to only use wgetis a separate task which can be done before or after this PR (but please in a separate PR). I just wanted to say that there is no need to support curl here and to remove that later again.

make deps-ubuntu installs wget.

[stweil]

Error messages should be added / improved, and instead of checking for curl or wget, a check for wget only would be better.

[cneud]

Just to note that curl is required for the OCR-D Research Data Repository and since this is included with taverna_workflow, users of that will see their workflows fail when curl is not installed by ocrd_all.

[stweil]

Just to note that curl is required for the OCR-D Research Data Repository and since this is included with taverna_workflow, users of that will see their workflows fail when curl is not installed by ocrd_all.

make deps-ubuntu already installs wget. Should it also install curl then?

As far as I remember, a default installation of Ubuntu already includes curl, so most users will have it. For those who install a minimal Ubuntu adding curl to CUSTOM_DEPS might be a good idea.

[kba]

We have since introduced a different check target and I see no point in moving forward with this PR.