From owner-freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Jul 20 10:23:56 2007 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-doc@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6445216A41B; Fri, 20 Jul 2007 10:23:56 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from marc@blackend.org) Received: from abigail.blackend.org (ns0.blackend.org [82.227.222.164]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E6ADE13C46E; Fri, 20 Jul 2007 10:23:55 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from marc@blackend.org) Received: from gothic.blackend.org (gothic.blackend.org [192.168.1.203]) by abigail.blackend.org (8.13.4/8.13.3) with ESMTP id l6KABhiW062249; Fri, 20 Jul 2007 12:11:43 +0200 (CEST) (envelope-from marc@abigail.blackend.org) Received: from gothic.blackend.org (localhost.blackend.org [127.0.0.1]) by gothic.blackend.org (8.14.1/8.13.8) with ESMTP id l6KABhcU002396; Fri, 20 Jul 2007 12:11:43 +0200 (CEST) (envelope-from marc@gothic.blackend.org) Received: (from marc@localhost) by gothic.blackend.org (8.14.1/8.13.8/Submit) id l6KABheq002395; Fri, 20 Jul 2007 12:11:43 +0200 (CEST) (envelope-from marc) Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2007 12:11:43 +0200 From: Marc Fonvieille To: Giorgos Keramidas Message-ID: <20070720101143.GB1002@gothic.blackend.org> Mail-Followup-To: Giorgos Keramidas , freebsd-doc@freebsd.org, Chin-San Huang , doc-committers@freebsd.org, cvs-doc@freebsd.org, cvs-all@freebsd.org References: <200707190121.l6J1LOvd007607@repoman.freebsd.org> <20070719054803.GA1002@gothic.blackend.org> <469F1D0F.2090307@FreeBSD.org> <20070719125410.GA9766@kobe.laptop> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20070719125410.GA9766@kobe.laptop> X-Useless-Header: blackend.org X-Operating-System: FreeBSD 6.2-STABLE User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.15 (2007-04-06) Cc: freebsd-doc@freebsd.org, doc-committers@freebsd.org, Chin-San Huang , cvs-doc@freebsd.org, cvs-all@freebsd.org Subject: Re: cvs commit: doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/ports/chapter.sgml X-BeenThere: freebsd-doc@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Documentation project List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2007 10:23:56 -0000 On Thu, Jul 19, 2007 at 03:54:10PM +0300, Giorgos Keramidas wrote: > On 2007-07-19 01:13, Doug Barton wrote: > >>> en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/ports chapter.sgml > >>> Log: > >>> - Introduce another way for upgrading packages and ports using bpkg(8). > >> > >> I'm not sure the Handbook has the vocation to talk about all > >> available tools to manage ports and packages. [...] > > > > FWIW, I (with portmaster author hat on) am sort of ambivalent about > > this issue. I've avoided adding anything to that chapter about > > portmaster because my personal feeling is that a laundry list of > > tools isn't useful to the user, especially if all the descriptions > > are the same size as the ones that are there now. > > > > What I think would be more useful (and again, I'm speaking only for > > myself) would be a list of tools available with a brief description > > of each, and links to outside sources (web pages, pkg-descr files, > > etc.) where an interested user can get more information. I do think > > that letting our users know that there are tools available is a good > > thing, I don't think mini-manuals for each tool is appropriate in > > that context. > > This sounds nice. > > It would also be nice to have articles like: > > "Managing thirdparty ports & packages with portupgrade" > "Managing thirdparty ports & packages with portmaster" > "Managing thirdparty ports & packages with XXX" > > in the doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/... collection, so the Handbook > can talk about the general, common ideas behind port management, and > the articles can turn into mini-manuals. > > It may even be possible to talk about one or two (the 'official' port > management tools), and then move the rest into separate articles. If > the tools mentioned in the articles get 'official' status or one of > the currently official tools gets dropped, or gets stale, we can move > chunks of the Handbook from articles to the book, or from the book to > standalone articles. > > Does this sound like something which makes more sense than blowing up > the size of the Handbook with full manuals about all the available > tools we have now? > That's exactly what I think. For the moment we have one "official" management tool: portupgrade, hence this one must be documented in the ports chapter. I also feel portmaster may be added in future. For the other third-party tools, they can be the subject of a specific article but adding a mini-howto section in the Handbook for each other tool is not a good thing. I just looked at http://www.bsdstats.org/freebsd/ports.php?category=ports-mgmt just to get an idea of what some (4,982) people use: bpkg 1 portmanager 210 portmaster 265 portupgrade 1836 portupgrade-devel 552 well portupgrade, beside being mentioned everywhere in UPDATING, is really used by our community. -- Marc