[Yum] Other formats for HOWTO, documentation in general

Jeff Sheltren sheltren at cs.ucsb.edu
Wed Nov 26 19:32:38 UTC 2003


Hi Robert, I'm replying to this email since I seem to have deleted the
original mail you sent out regarding the HOWTO.  Here are my comments:

- You mention in the 'HOWTO Organization' that the document is geared
towards the Sys Admin type, but it seems that you end up doing a lot of
explaining of more basic stuff such as 'be careful when you're root'
kinda thing.  Other sections seem quite wordy, at least for a HOWTO
anyway.  Don't get me wrong, I think what is there is well-written; it's
just most HOWTOs out there for linux stuff seem to be more of the
short-but-sweet style.  In short, I think you could strip out a lot of
stuff without taking away from the document as a whole.  ie. I don't
think you need to have stuff like 'how to use CVS', etc. in there.  As
it is, I think it reads more like a 'yum for dummies' - It explains
stuff so everyone can understand, but that makes it harder for
semi-knowledgable people to find the information they want.

- In section(s) 10.2 ... 10.4 I assume you will mention the current
defaults of the rpm (ie. nightly updates on/off), etc. and perhaps an
easy way to change these defaults?  ie. install the src.rpm and
comment/uncomment the spec as needed, then rebuild.

- group stuff: I actually only use groupupdate - not groupinstall, but
maybe that is just me.  Anyway, groupupdate installs everything in that
group if it is not already installed, as well as updating stuff that is
installed, so I didn't find a good reason to use groupinstall.  Of
course, Seth may have a good reason...  Also, I think it would be
helpful to show an example yumgroups.xml file and mention how to
generate one (by hand, or using Seth's yumgengroups.py  or my
yumgroups.pl - both located here:
http://linux.duke.edu/projects/yum/download/misc/ ) I think if people
see how easy it is to setup the groups stuff they'll realize how useful
it can be.

OK, I hope you find that helpful.  If not, feel free to ignore!  Thanks
for the HOWTO :)

-Jeff




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