Re: New developer papercut - Makefile references INSTALL

Robert Haas <robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
> On Fri, Jan 21, 2022 at 11:39 AM Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
>> =?UTF-8?B?Sm9zZWYgxaBpbcOhbmVr?= <josef(dot)simanek(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
>>> Another solution would be to merge both README files together and make
>>> separate section for development/git based codebase.

>> There's a lot to be said for that approach: make it simpler, not
>> more complicated.

> Yeah.

Josef, you want to draft a patch?

> And what about just getting rid of the INSTALL file altogether?
> I think that, in 2022, a lot of people are likely to use git to obtain
> the source code rather than obtain a tarball. And regardless of what
> method they use to get the source code, they don't really need there
> to be a text file in the directory with installation instructions; a
> URL is just fine. There was a time when you couldn't count on people
> to have a web browser conveniently available, either because that
> whole world wide web thing hadn't really caught on yet, or because
> they didn't even have an always-on Internet connection. In that world,
> an INSTALL file in the tarball makes a lot of sense. But these delays,
> the number of people who are still obtaining PostgreSQL via
> UUCP-over-modem-relay has got to be ... relatively limited.

I'm not convinced by this argument. In the first place, the INSTALL
file isn't doing any harm. I don't know that I'd bother to build the
infrastructure for it today, but we already have that infrastructure
and it's not causing us any particular maintenance burden. In the
second place, I think your argument is a bit backwards. Sure, people
who are relying on a git pull can be expected to have easy access to
on-line docs; that's exactly why we aren't troubled by not providing
ready-to-go INSTALL docs in that case. But that doesn't follow for
people who are using a tarball. In particular, it might not be that
easy to find on-line docs matching the specific tarball version they
are working with. (With the planned meson conversion, that's about to
become a bigger deal than it's been in the recent past.)

regards, tom lane