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tgnb
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Joined: 16 Apr 2002
Posts: 208
Location: New York, NY

PostPosted: Wed Aug 28, 2002 3:11 pm    Post subject: Suggestion from the Real World (Gemba) Reply with quote

Let me start off by saying that I really like Gentoo Linux. I have learned more about Linux itself by using Gentoo for 6 months than I have in the past 3 years using RedHat, Mandrake and Slackware. Gentoo is the first distribution that TRULY made me feel excited about using linux and that excitement hasnt waned one bit after about 6 months of use.

The forums are absolutely excellent for support. The IRC chan is also great, although I observed that the ratio of the number of people helping others to the number of people seeking help is changing for the worse.

Now, having said that I feel that there is something very important lacking in Gentoo that holds it back from being even better.

The lack of up to date documentation. Because Gentoo is very rapidly developed lots of things change constantly. It is hard to keep up with these changes if they are not properly documented. This has resulted in some hours of headaches for me that I feel were unneccesary. The emerge man pages are a very good example. They were horribly out of date for too long IMHO.

Another good example is the documentation of USE variables. It is very hard to find an up to date list of these USE variables. An up to date, and complete list of USE variables could have saved me many frustrated nights.

To sum it up, I believe that Gentoo would benefit from slightly slower development at the cost of more up to date documentation. I believe this would help a lot of us, trying to use the OS in a "real world" production environment.

Have you ever considered creating a use variable or something similar for portage that would let a user choose from emerging either a

1) bleeding edge system with all the newest packages or
2) a stable system with only tested and confirmed working packages.

Just an Idea. Keep up the Great work Gentoo.
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wickidpisa
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Joined: 21 Jul 2002
Posts: 27

PostPosted: Fri Aug 30, 2002 9:46 am    Post subject: Re: Suggestion from the Real World (Gemba) Reply with quote

tgnb wrote:
An up to date, and complete list of USE variables could have saved me many frustrated nights.


/usr/portage/profiles/use.desc should always be up to date.

tgnb wrote:
To sum it up, I believe that Gentoo would benefit from slightly slower development at the cost of more up to date documentation. I believe this would help a lot of us, trying to use the OS in a "real world" production environment.


Most of the developers I have seen would agree that gentoo is not ready for a production environment. Until it reaches the stage that it is ready, trying to keep all the docs up to date is going to be a losing battle. Rather than slow down the development process so they can keep docs up to date, they choose to speed it up so that they can reach a more stable state sooner.

That being said, I don't think the docs are in such a terrible state. In most cases it is not that they are not there, it is that you don't know where to look. Gentoo's docs are located in too many different places. My biggest problem with it is that they sometimes make a 20 page --help option rather than put that stuff in the man page.

If you think it's that bad, why don't you help out and write some docs :wink:
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tgnb
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Joined: 16 Apr 2002
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PostPosted: Fri Aug 30, 2002 10:17 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
/usr/portage/profiles/use.desc should always be up to date.


Right, but on my system it is dated 11 april 2002 thats about 5+ months ago.
The one located at http://www.gentoo.org/doc/use-howto.html is actually newer and was updated on april 24 2002.
In addition they are not complete. I as well as a friend of mine have found through chatting on IRC and visiting the forums that there are use variables that are "undocumented".

Quote:
Most of the developers I have seen would agree that gentoo is not ready for a production environment


If that is true, why are is the version count at 1.X? As far as I know a 1.0 release usually means it is finished and ready for production.

Quote:
Rather than slow down the development process so they can keep docs up to date, they choose to speed it up so that they can reach a more stable state sooner.


I would tend to disagree that thats the best option. I have found that the best and most complete documentation comes from keeping up with the documentation as the changes are made. This for example is probably the way we end up with incomplete USE variable docs. Because it is not kept up some are simply missed.

Quote:
In most cases it is not that they are not there, it is that you don't know where to look.


Well, man pages, documentation on the website, forums and IRC is where i would look first. But even the emerge man page was for a very long time way out of date and even contained incorrect syntax.

Quote:
If you think it's that bad, why don't you help out and write some docs


You are completely correct, thats what I and others should do. Although you make it sound like I think its "that bad". I was merely making suggestions and giving feedback.
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