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Date:      Thu, 19 Jul 2007 15:54:10 +0300
From:      Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@freebsd.org>
To:        freebsd-doc@freebsd.org
Cc:        doc-committers@freebsd.org, Chin-San Huang <chinsan@freebsd.org>, Marc Fonvieille <blackend@freebsd.org>, cvs-all@freebsd.org, cvs-doc@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: cvs commit: doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/ports/chapter.sgml
Message-ID:  <20070719125410.GA9766@kobe.laptop>
In-Reply-To: <469F1D0F.2090307@FreeBSD.org>
References:  <200707190121.l6J1LOvd007607@repoman.freebsd.org> <20070719054803.GA1002@gothic.blackend.org> <469F1D0F.2090307@FreeBSD.org>

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On 2007-07-19 01:13, Doug Barton <dougb@freebsd.org> 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?

- Giorgos




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