Dear XRootD users and developers,

I wanted to install the XRootD python bindings for python 3.5 via pip on 
ScientificLinux 6, CentOS 7 and Ubuntu 18.04. For installation, I used 
the syntax "python3.5 -m pip install XRootD". Additionally, i tried to 
install the XRootD python bindings for python 2.7.

Since I observed some unexpected behavior during the installation and 
needed to find out and fix missing dependencies manually, I would 
recommend to change parts of the installation procedure.

1. The pip output message

     Even if the installation fails, pip states the installation as 
successful ignoring any errors.

2. The compilation of XRootD during pip installation

     The installation procedure does not check if all prerequisites are 
available.
     It would be nice, if pip tells you to install the required packages 
and you don't have to look into the debug output.

     For CentOS7, the following packages need to be installed:
     - cmake
     - make
     - zlib-devel
     - gcc-c++
     - openssl-devel
     - python-devel

     There may be additional requirements that were already installed on 
my system.

3. The python dependency in the installation script

     If I understood correctly, pip uses the install.sh script for 
installing the XRootD python bindings.

     In line 32, "python setup.py install" calls the default python 
version regardless of what python version was called for pip.
     If I sourced python3.5, the installation continues with the default 
python2.7 at this point.
     I have temporarily fixed this by linking the default python to the 
correct version to continue testing.

     Additionally, I found that "cmake" in line 8 uses the default 
python interpreter and library of the system instead of the version 
called by pip.

         -- Found PythonInterp: /usr/bin/python2 (found suitable version 
"2.7.5", minimum required is "2.4")
         -- Found PythonLibs: /usr/lib64/libpython2.7.so (found suitable 
version "2.7.5", minimum required is "2.4")

     This doesn't cause a failure of the installation, but I'm not sure 
if it will cause issues later.

I finally managed to install the XRootD python bindings for both python 
versions on all mentioned operating systems, but it was a long journey.

I would recommend to address these issues to make the XRootD python 
bindings easily installable by everyone. At least, a small documentation 
would be very helpful.

Best regards and many thanks,

Christoph

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