Re: Link t the souce code

On 2021-May-06, Jonathan S. Katz wrote:

> On 5/6/21 6:05 PM, Tom Lane wrote:
> > Alvaro Herrera <alvherre(at)alvh(dot)no-ip(dot)org> writes:
> >> I agree -- if the user wanted packages, they would not be reading that
> >> page of the docs. I'd just have it point to the same page that the
> >> download page points to for source downloads, not a version-specific
> >> one, as in the attached patch.
> >
> > +1. I think people reading this may have their own ideas about
> > which version they want. Also, getting the link to be sane in
> > the devel docs might be problematic.
>
> +1 on all of the above.

This text seems to work fine for released versions, but not very well
for development, because it says this:

The PostgreSQL 14devel sources can be obtained from the download section
of our website: https://www.postgresql.org/ftp/source/. You should get a
file named postgresql-14devel.tar.gz or postgresql-14devel.tar.bz2.

and no such thing as postgresql-14devel.tar.gz can be found anywhere as
far as I can see. What we do have is postgresql-snapshot.tar.gz, but
that's not located in /ftp/source/ but /ftp/snapshot/dev/.

I think if we wanted to be tense about these instructions being correct
for the devel version, we need more work. Options I can see:

1. add a directory for the current devel version in the FTP area.

2. use conditional XML markup that points to the snapshot dir when doing
the devel build

3. add a separate paragraph that says to obtain the source from the
other dir if it's the development one.

I kinda prefer the last one, because then we could also suggest to use a
Git repo instead of a tarball, which I suppose is the best option anyway.

--
Álvaro Herrera 39°49'30"S 73°17'W