Compilation and installation issues

[gilesc]

I'm on Arch Linux, whose default Python is Python 3. To compile, I had to edit "prepare.sh" in a few places to refer to "pip2" and "python2" instead of "pip" and "python" respectively. I think this change would also work on other platforms as to my knowledge these are also installed as aliases for python even on platforms with a default of Python 2. Or some line could be added like:
PYTHON=$(which python2 || which python).

Secondly, I think the compilation process should support (and probably default) to not requiring root. This is a requirement on many distros in order to create packages, as it is generally known to be a bad idea to compile or run random code from the internet as root, and generally autobuilders that build .deb or .pkg or whatever type of package do not run as root. I think the only places that currently require root are the lines containing "python setup.py install" and "pip install". This could be fixed just by adding the "--user" flag to those lines. Or even better, the prepare.sh can detect if it is being run as root or not ("whoami" or $USER) and add the --user flag accordingly.

Finally, it would be nice if the installation process would default to using the platform's libraries when they are already installed (protobuf, gtest, etc). This is also necessary to create packages unless the package maintainer wants to build static binaries. This is not such a big problem, but dynamic linking is the custom and saves a little space.

[gilesc]

Also, a "make PREFIX=/my/install/prefix install" command would be nice.

I think it would be as simple as:

for bin in $(find src/ -executable | grep rs_ | grep -v test); do cp $bin $PREFIX/bin; done

but I don't know if that's everything that needs to be installed or not.

[pimentel]

+1 to all of the comments stated above