Re: New developer papercut - Makefile references INSTALL

On Mon, Mar 7, 2022 at 4:57 PM Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
>
> Magnus Hagander <magnus(at)hagander(dot)net> writes:
> > If anything, I'm more behind the idea of just getting rid of the
> > INSTALL file. A reference to the install instructions in the README
> > should be enough today. The likelihood of somebody getting a postgres
> > source tarball and trying to build it for the first time while not
> > having internet access is extremely low I'd say.
>
> I agree that there's no longer a lot of reason to insist that the
> installation instructions need to be present in a flat text file
> as opposed to some other way.
>
> However, just putting a URL into README seems problematic, because how
> will we ensure that it's the correct version-specific URL? (And it does
> need to be version-specific; the set of configure options changes over
> time, and that's not even mentioning whatever user-visible effects
> changing to meson will have.) You could imagine generating the URL
> during tarball build, but that does nothing for the people who pull
> directly from git.
>
> I thought briefly about directing people to read
> doc/src/sgml/html/installation.html, but that has the same problem
> that it won't be present in a fresh git pull.

Yeah, if we just care about tarballs that works, but then it also
works to inject the version number in the README file.

But taking a step back, who is the actual audience for this? Do we
*need* a link pointing directly there, or is it enough to just point
to "use the docs on the web"? We can't link to the incorrect version,
but can we just link to /docs/ and leave it at that?

If not, could we make the change of URL a part of the branching step?
Branch to a stable release would the include modifying README, and be
mad ea step of version_stamp.pl?

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