Hiya,
As someone who is trying to get into packaging in Fedora, I would really really appreciate the docs being less dispersed:
Yes, the move to docs.fp.o is frustrating because googling what I need often points me to the old location and then I have to click the link to get to the new location. And while the docs site looks "prettier", everything seems to be "bigger" so it takes more scrolling to find what I need.
Also, we used to keep things like "since Fedora X, it's no longer necessary to use Y in your spec file." Now, if it gets removed because it's automatically handled by scriptlets or file triggers, it just "disappears" from the guidelines. That makes it confusing for long time packagers :)
more up-to-date and more comprehensive. I used to work with FreeBSD a lot before and there although packaging was a lot harder due to the clunky reliance on Makefiles, the FreeBSD Porter's Handbook thoroughly covered almost everything, from absolute basics to minute details. Many of the RPM packaging guides are extremely basic and miss important macros like %{qmake_
qt5} or changes like the obsolition of %{?_smp_mflags}. Heck, at one point I even had to refer to some ancient guides (http://ftp.rpm.org/max-rpm/ and http://wiki.rosalab.ru/en/index.php/Rpmlint_Errors), because the official docs omit important nuances. In all honesty, there should ever be only one document on packaging, possibly split into multiple pages for committing convenience. Also, changes and updates to RPM spec design should be simultaneously reflected in the official docs.
Not, packaging related, but under the same umbrella as general documentation, I often find myself using Arch docs as they seem to be quite detailed and comprehensive. We don't seem to have anything like that level of documentation.
The Fedora Magazine articles are great to lower the barrier of entry, but after that the prospective packager is lost in details which will eventually come up in the review process and will have to be addressed on a per-package basis.
As someone who just recently started out with packaging and has a fresh view on the problem, I would be more than happy to help out with the docs :).
YES PLEASE. Documentation isn't necessarily and afterthought, but it's not "fun" and not many people want to do it.
Thanks,
Richard