dnf versus yum

[Adam Williamson]

On Mon, 2014-01-06 at 17:22 +0100, Lars E. Pettersson wrote:
> On 01/06/2014 05:04 PM, Adam Williamson wrote:
> ...
> >> The reason for me asking was that you accused me of "excoriating the dnf
> >> devs" (a rather harsh accusation) just because I did not try
> >> erase/remove. I looked at the documentation and used auto completion.
> >> Why would I try a number of different sub-commands if they were not
> >> documented?
> >
> > Because you're suggesting that they no longer exist? Making sure the
> > thing you claim no longer exists *actually no longer exists* seems like
> > a pre-requisite of making such a claim.
> 
> Well, they are not documented. That should be enough to test. (I have 
> added these documentation bugs to Bugzilla, and next version of dnf will 
> now show both uses, hopefully the yum bug will be corrected soon also)
> 
> >> If a thing is not documented, it does not exist.
> >
> > No, I think you're confused. If it's not documented, it's not
> > documented. If it doesn't exist, it doesn't exist. Two different
> > conditions, see. One related to existence. One to documentation. ;)
> 
> Your quote was one sentence too little. The second sentence was "The 
> first rule of documenting". I.e. the first rule of documenting is that 
> something that is not documented does not exist. I.e. make sure that 
> your documentation fully document what the application (in this case) is 
> capable of doing, including all sub commands, options, etc.
> 
> The reasoning behind this is so that a user can get the full picture of 
> the application by only reading the documentation. He/she should not 
> need to try things, they should be documented, if they are not 
> documented, then it is a documentation bug.

I understand the argument you were trying to make, but I think it's
putting things far too strongly, so I provided a flippant reply as an
indication of this belief.

The xkcd link I posted in another context I think sufficiently indicates
that things that aren't documented certainly *do* exist...=)

It's a nice theory. Sure. It's not a tenable basis on which to operate
in the real world of software. So if you want to argue that something
doesn't exist, check whether it exists. If you only check the
documentation, you're not checking the software, whatever your
philosophy on documentation (and there are others besides yours).
-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | XMPP: adamw AT happyassassin . net
http://www.happyassassin.net