Re: Re: RC3 ...

The Hermit Hacker writes:

> On Sat, 7 Apr 2001, Peter Eisentraut wrote:
>
> > The Hermit Hacker writes:
> >
> > > Okay, unless someone can come up with a really good argument *for* why
> > > docs has to be included as part of the main tar file,
> >
> > Because people want to read the documentation.
>
> get postgresql.src.tar.gz
> get postgresql.docs.tar.gz
>
> instead of just
>
> get postgresql.tar.gz

But we already have a set of split distributions. If you want to split it
in a different way, why not, but abolishing the full distribution is going
to seriously alienate use from the conventions used in open source land.

> I'm curious as to how many ppl would actually download those docs ...

This is the wrong question to ask. The real question to me is: If we do
this, how many people won't download the documentation, don't read it,
don't find it, spread the word that PostgreSQL is poorly documented, don't
use it correctly, spread the word that PostgreSQL isn't easy to use, and
take our time with avoidable mailing list traffic? Also, how many people
will consequently not even get a chance to contribute to the
documentation? People won't do two downloads for marginal benefit.

But let me ask you this: If we split out the documentation, why stop
there? Why not leave out pgtclsh, how many people need that? Or what
about the JDBC driver sources? People can download the pre-compiled jar
file. These are in fact valid concerns, and they are adressed by the
split tarballs that we offer. But there *must* be a full source tarball.
I cannot count on two hands the occasion where I had a source package
where people left out "non-essential" source files. They lost me as a
contributor. I'm not going to set up a CVS pull to fix a sentence.

> I
> know that I'd never do so, as I'm never on the same machine that the
> server is running from, so just hit the web site ...

I think you would be glad if more people read them locally and less people
hit the web. ;-)

> so, for those that do, we are giving them one extra step, and for those
> that don't, saving them time and bandwidth ...

People that want to save time and bandwidth use binary packages or the
split tarballs that we already have.

--
Peter Eisentraut peter_e(at)gmx(dot)net http://yi.org/peter-e/