Standard configuration generates numerous errors regarding missing RCS commands.

Installing Foswiki 1.1.3 on fully-updated Ubuntu 11.04 system and I'd read the system requirements section regarding RCS, which clearly implies that installing RCS as a separate package is optional, and that Foswiki includes its own implementation, so I just accepted that and never installed the rcs package.

First time in configure, I had 11 warnings, none of which seemed significant so I just scrolled to the bottom of the configure screen and pressed "Save changes." Got to screen for setting Configure password, set that and pressed "Set password and save changes," at which point I was told I had 27 errors, pretty much totally related to missing RCS-related commands like ci, co, rcs and so on (similar error messages logged to /var/log/apache2/error.log).

Why wasn't this issue identified before I tried to complete the configuration step? Currently under the Store page, the store implementation is set to Foswiki::Store::RcsWrap. I could, of course, set it to RcsLite instead (if that indeed solves the problem). But it's still unnerving to have started out with only 11 warnings, do what looks like a simple configuration, then suddenly be presented with 27 errors, most of them for an issue that should have been identified earlier and that should have let me change the settings for the Store.

rday

Ubuntu Natty is very new and the dropping of RCS will need us to make some changes. Currently the configuration will default to RCS::Lite on Windows systems where RCS is unavailable. Everywhere else it defaults to the RCS wrapper. That is no longer a safe assumption. We probably need to add a checker and "guess" RCS::Lite when the rcs commands are unavailable. This one needs a task opened.

-- GeorgeClark - 22 Jul 2011