Thread: Tutorial clarify
The following documentation comment has been logged on the website: Page: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/16/tutorial-install.html Description: New and wanted to follow getting started docs but it seems it was written for Unix. Would be nice if you built out the getting started docs for more than Unix. whatever, no one probs reads this anymore. to the void you go!
On Wed, Aug 7, 2024 at 7:34 AM PG Doc comments form <noreply@postgresql.org> wrote:
The following documentation comment has been logged on the website:
Page: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/16/tutorial-install.html
Description:
New and wanted to follow getting started docs but it seems it was written
for Unix. Would be nice if you built out the getting started docs for more
than Unix. whatever, no one probs reads this anymore. to the void you go!
Maybe 1% of the content is OS-specific and those pieces seem easily translatable to Windows as it's basically just writing a different path. I'm not sure we'd turn down a patch that aimed to make things either more OS-agnostic or more OS-inclusive but yeah, we've current made the choice to keep things simple and just choose a single shell framework, the most common one, moreso now that WSL exists, to write in.
Frankly, I find it unlikely a Windows user is going to appreciate any command line based tutorial; but we are not going to go and write one for the official documentation that covers using a third-party graphical user interface as the client tool of choice. Those third-parties, or the broader community, are expected to cater to that need if it exists.
David J.
"David G. Johnston" <david.g.johnston@gmail.com> writes:
> On Wed, Aug 7, 2024 at 7:34 AM PG Doc comments form <noreply@postgresql.org>
> wrote:
>> New and wanted to follow getting started docs but it seems it was written
>> for Unix. Would be nice if you built out the getting started docs for more
>> than Unix. whatever, no one probs reads this anymore. to the void you go!
> Maybe 1% of the content is OS-specific and those pieces seem easily
> translatable to Windows as it's basically just writing a different path.
Yeah, there's not that much that's environment-specific, but sadly
just about all of it is stuff a newbie has to deal with before writing
their first SQL command. I'm not sure how we can make that better in
an environment-agnostic way though. We are certainly not going to
provide N different sets of instructions trying to cover all the
popular packagings of Postgres: it would be a mess and would likely be
constantly out-of-date. As you say, that's really the responsibility
of the packagers.
Perhaps we should make "1.1. Installation" refer more explicitly to
packager-supplied documentation? And I wonder how many people reading
that really have a "site administrator" who is not them. Even for
people running Unix/Linux, that text seems like it's making archaic
assumptions.
regards, tom lane