Re: INSTALL file - Mailing list pgsql-hackers
From | Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum |
---|---|
Subject | Re: INSTALL file |
Date | |
Msg-id | a22a48dd-6157-e6fa-cfd4-70c8c347a451@pgug.de Whole thread Raw |
In response to | Re: INSTALL file (Andrew Dunstan <andrew.dunstan@2ndquadrant.com>) |
Responses |
Re: INSTALL file
(Stephen Frost <sfrost@snowman.net>)
|
List | pgsql-hackers |
On 30.10.18 11:49, Andrew Dunstan wrote: > > > On 10/30/2018 06:14 AM, Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum wrote: >> On 30.10.18 04:11, Michael Paquier wrote: >>> On Mon, Oct 29, 2018 at 01:01:47PM +0100, Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum >>> wrote: >>>> That is not the first file people looking at. Especially not people >>>> looking >>>> at the GitHub copy: >>>> >>>> https://github.com/postgres/postgres >>>> >>>> I understand that there is documentation, but for the casual developer >>>> looking at this, it seems broken. >>> FWIW, I think that people depend too much on github and what github >>> thinks projects should do to be more presentable, like adding a >>> markdown-style README or such. >>> >>> I get your point that people look at README first though, and that the >>> current status is confusing. One idea would be to merge the >>> contents of >>> README.git into the README. However the current status also makes some >>> sense, as INSTALL is part of an distributed tarball, while >>> README.git is >>> automatically removed when running "make distdir". Looking at >>> README is >>> the first thing I do when checking out any project or after >>> decompressing any source code tarball, so things could be better. >> >> >> Right, thanks. That's why one of my proposals was to have an INSTALL >> file in place, and overwrite it during the tarball creation process. >> >> This way the general INSTALL file is there, and can contain "general" >> instructions, and later on is overwritten by a specific INSTALL file >> for the tarballs. >> >> >> > > > > That has the potential to be somewhat confusing: > > "The INSTALL file says ..." > > "Which INSTALL file are you referring to?" > > > Merging README.git into README make sense. > > I think our attitude has generally been that if you're a developer you > should build from git, in which case we assume you know what you're > doing, and everyone else should build from a tarball. That's arguably > somewhat old-fashioned, specially since you can download release > tarballs/zips from places like > <https://github.com/postgres/postgres/releases> Sadly, these won't > have the artefacts created by "make dist". Maybe those too are less > important these days. > Most experienced developers will know, I think. This was raised during the Google Code-In project, where students stumbled over this, and asked where the INSTALL file is ... This has potential to confuse anyone new to PostgreSQL, and it's a burden which can easily be avoided. -- Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum German PostgreSQL User Group European PostgreSQL User Group - Board of Directors Volunteer Regional Contact, Germany - PostgreSQL Project
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