Re: New developer papercut - Makefile references INSTALL

Robert Haas <robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
> On Fri, Jan 21, 2022 at 12:19 PM Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
>> 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.

> I think it *is* doing harm. It confuses people. We get semi-regular
> threads on the list like this one where people are confused by the
> file not being there,

That's not the fault of INSTALL, that's the fault of the README files,
which I think we're agreed we can fix. (Or, if you suppose that they
came to the code with some previous expectation that there'd be an
INSTALL file, taking it away is certainly not going to improve matters.)

> but I can't remember ever seeing a thread where
> someone said that it was great, or said that they thought it needed
> improvement, or said that they used it and then something interesting
> happened afterward, or anything like that.

It's just another copy of the same documentation, so I can't really
imagine a situation where someone would feel a need to mention it
specifically.

regards, tom lane