Re: Getting Started section

On Wed, Mar 2, 2016 at 9:36 AM, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:

> Maciek Sakrejda <m(dot)sakrejda(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
> > I just spent some time helping a former colleague work out some basic
> setup
> > issues after he got stuck trying to follow the Getting Started section of
> > the manual [1] and almost gave up. For what it's worth, he's very
> > technical, but does not deal with Postgres setup regularly.
> > ...
> > Obviously this is not a solution for everyone, but I think packaging is
> > more common and more standardized these days, and administrators who may
> > have set up Postgres for you and can help you get started are less
> common.
>
> Agreed, but I should think that properly packaged versions of Postgres
> will come with some package-specific instructions. Is that missing
> in Debian's version, or out of date, or did he just not read it?
>

It's definitely there for debian - it's in
/usr/share/doc/postgresql-common/README.Debian.gz

>
> It might not be a bad thing for us to add some text near the head of
> "Getting Started" pointing out that it's meant for manual installations,
> and encouraging people to look to package-specific docs when present.
>

And probably even exactly where those docs are to be found for at least the
most common platforms, I think.

The bigger question is, is it worth actually more or less importing the
contents of that into our main documentation. After all, 99% of our users
(or something thereabouts) are probably using the packaged versions, which
means that those parts of our documentation are simply irrelevant to
them... Which is not great when it's the "getting started" part.

--
Magnus Hagander
Me: http://www.hagander.net/
Work: http://www.redpill-linpro.com/