Why we should run away from n*100 packages per doc

John J. McDonough wb8rcr at arrl.net
Fri Jun 5 13:44:06 UTC 2009


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Paul W. Frields" <stickster at gmail.com>
To: <fedora-docs-list at redhat.com>
Sent: Friday, June 05, 2009 8:17 AM
Subject: Why we should run away from n*100 packages per doc


> http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/rel-eng/2009-June/005572.html
>
> You can see the same discussion occurring on the rel-eng list
> concerning the TeX Live 2008/9 packaging.  Hopefully it will save
> everyone needless frustration if we instead pursue getting the Zikula
> CMS set up so any user can simply click his way to a specific RPM for
> his document and language.  Putting these in the Fedora repository is
> simply begging for conflict.

IMO, a perfect solution would allow a user to install documentation that he 
wants in his own language, or in the combination of languages he wants 
installed.  Given that there are over 1000 possible combinations of single 
language/document/format, that would add a lot of packages to a PackageKit 
that is already burdened with far too many packages to be useful (but that 
is another issue).

A single RPM per document/language/format seems an ideal approach, but 
clearly adding all those packages to the repositories is not a good answer. 
Doing something with Zikula does seem like a possible solution.  All those 
RPMs wouldn't seem so daunting if you chould choose your format, languge and 
document independently.

> Along with that CMS we should be planning for how to *make sure users
> find that site.*

As well as docs.fp.o.  I suspect a lot of the time a user would just as soon 
read the documentation online if he knew how to find it.  Seems like we need 
an online and an install choice, or perhaps that is at the bottom; after 
choosing document/language/format the user has the choice of reading or 
installing.  Or, perhaps installing and reading are different thought 
processes, and the choice is at the top (which give us more to maintain, 
tho).

Maybe what we do is add an install choice in docs.fp.o (or more likely it's 
successor), and a menu choice to view documentation.  All sorts of potential 
variants with good and bad of each.  Those that seem the most user friendly 
also seem like the most work!

--McD




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