Good News:
----------------
We have made good progress in the vista-foia package,
and it seems to be ready for a first review by experienced
Debian developers.
Apologies in advance for the length of this email.
We are hoping that by making it a thorough description of
the package, we will reduce the burden on the kind souls
who will be willing to review and critique the current package.
Disclaimer:
--------------
This first packaging is not intended for use in any clinical facility.
We have been focused on an education (and maybe research)
audience. The main goal of this package is to make easier to
prepare VistA instances suitable for students to learn about
Electronic Health Records (EHR), on the Debian Linux platform.
Current State:
-----------------
We have configured the generation of the orig.tar.gz file,
and we succeed to build the content it using "debuild",
then managed to install the resulting .deb package.
Particularities:
------------------
This package is build out of the combination of two source trees.
a) VistA-M: The actual MUMPS code written by the US Department
of Veterans Affairs, and now hosted by OSEHRA at:
This is a rather large source tree with 27,484 files (.m) containing
MUMPS routines, and 2,933 files (.zwr) containing "globals"
(Think of globals as akin to JSON files with the structure of the
VistA database )(MUMPS developers out there, please forgive
us for the license taken in that comparison... this is all in good
spririt)
VistA-M is a hefty package, given that it is the result of more
than forty years of development and use in several hundred
clinical facilities.
b) VistA: A scaffolding infrastructure used to configure, build, test,
and update the VistA-M tree mentioned in (a). This is a smaller
source tree, and is mostly based on CMake and Python scripts.
A clone of this tree has been put in Alioth, and has been modified
to add the "debian" directory and a set of patches that facilitate
the creation of the debian package. We will be merging this with
upstream, to reduce the future burden of maintenance.
The upstream location of this tree is hosted by OSEHRA at:
The cloned/adapted tree for debian packaging is in Alioth at:
with a clone here:
The combined build has been configured by placing the source
tree (a) in a sub-directory of (b) at the moment of doing
"get-orig-source".
This could be simplified by using git sub-modules, and setting
VistA-M as a git sub-module of VistA. It all depends on what is
more convenient (and more acceptable) to ftpmaster.
Dependencies:
-----------------
The main dependency is: fis-gtm
Many Thanks to all who helped getting GTM package done !
Other dependencies are: CMake and Python
Full details, of course, are in the control file.
Building:
-----------
When calling "debuild", the packaging happens in four stages:
1) Creation of a "vista instance skeleton". This is a set of directories
where we are going to import the MUMPS routines, and to import
the globals into a database.
2) Configuration of CMake infrastructure. This is done as part of the
"configure" script, and it results in a set of Makefiles being generated.
3) Build. In this step the Makefiles invoke a set of CMake and Python
scripts that take care of:
Importing routines, importing globals, doing basic configuration,
pre-compiling all the MUMPS routines, and creating a shared library
with the 27,000+ resulting .o files.
4) Install. Copying the final "vista instance" into the destination directory.
debuild, nicely package the whole into the .deb file.
Local Installation Test:
----------------------------
At the end of the build process we get files:
vista-foia-0.20130405_0.20140106-1_amd64.deb
vista-foia_0.20140106-1_all.deb
that we can locally install with the command
sudo dpkg -i vista-foia-0.20130405_0.20140106-1_amd64.deb
and in this way place the "vista instance" in the directory:
/usr/share/vista-foia/V-0.20130405
Version Numbering Scheme:
------------------------------------
Because the package combines the two source trees mentioned
above, there are two names and versions that are relevant to the
package.
For the source tree of VistA-M, which is the actual MUMPS code
of VistA, we are using the date of the most recent FOIA release
that has been fully processed by OSEHRA. This is from the date
April 5th 2013
Hence the package is being named:
vista-foia V-0.20130405
The scaffolding (CMake + Python), on the other hand, that was
branched from the VistA repository in OSEHRA, is based on the
version of date:
January 6th 2014
Hence its version is marked as:
0.20140106
In this way, we are attempting to differentiate the version of the
VistA MUMPS project, from the version of the VistA CMake
infrastructure that is used to build the former, and subsequently
to package it for Debian.
Intended Use:
------------------
We anticipate that the Debian user of this package will follow
a bit the model of how a MediaWiki is installed and deployed,
or how a Moodle system is installed and deployed. That is,
there is the "installation" of the package code and configuration
files, then there is the "deployment of an instance", of which
one can have many in the same Debian machine.
For the first part, we get it done with:
sudo apt-get install vista-foia
For the second part,
a Linux user with sudo access will run the script:
/usr/share/vista-foia/V-0.20130405/deploy/createVistaInstance.sh
Thanks to Chris Edwards (from KRM) for crafting this script.
The use will be along the lines of
sudo ./createVistaInstance.sh inst001
where "inst001" will be our made-up name an installation.
Base on this name, a set of dedicated three Linux users will be
created in the system, and then, in the home directory of one
of them, the script installs a fresh "vista instance", by mostly
copying some pieces from the pristine template that is in:
/usr/share/vista-foia/V-0.20130405/
The MUMPS routines, and their compiled objects (an .so file)
will remain in the pristine directory in /usr/share/vista-foia...
The fresh "vista instance" can then be configured as a clinical
facility, and data can now be entered into it to make it usable
for EHR teaching and training. Permissions and security are
managed by taking advantage of the users permissions given
by the Linux account system.
Presumably, a professor teaching an EHR class, will do such
fresh installations for every student in the class, and in that
way, each one of them will be able to enter data, and tinker
with her/his own system without impacting others.
Something like
sudo ./createVistaInstance.sh inst001
sudo ./createVistaInstance.sh inst002
..
sudo ./createVistaInstance.sh inst031
The fresh vista instances will be mostly their own MUMPS
database, while they all will be sharing the MUMPS routines
installed in the pristine directory:
/usr/share/vista-foia/V-0.20130405/
in the shared library:
/usr/share/vista-foia/V-0.20130405/lib/libvista-foia.so
Student will still be able to play with modified MUMPS code,
by taking advantage of the mechanism that fis-gtm uses to
locate routines, which is based on a path (set of directories)
in the environment variable "gtmroutines". Students will
simply need to add their local directories at the beginning
of the list in the gtmroutines environment variable, and leave
towards the end the locations of the directories in the pristine
installation. More specifically:
/usr/share/vista-foia/V-0.20130405/r
/usr/share/vista-foia/V-0.20130405/lib/libvista-foia.so
Review:
----------
Since this is the first cut at a vista-foia package we are
sure that there are many parts that need fixing, to comply
with Debian policy, and many pieces that could be done
more efficiently and probably more elegantly.
We will appreciate all the guidance and advice that you
could provide us, and will be happy to adjust the package
as needed.
Many Thanks
Luis