[Lazarus] following wiki for new clean install from SVN...

[Juha Manninen]

waldo kitty kirjoitti tiistai 08 helmikuu 2011 17:50:43:
> ok, so i decided to break things today and see what problems i would run
> into... the following is my steps and what i ran into...
> 
>   1. go to http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/
>   2. now find something that points to how to install...
>      a. hummm... nothing on the main page jumps out...
>      b. let's try the FAQ link... nothing there jumps out...
>      c. let's try the Downloads's link... nothing there...
>      d. heck, let's see what the Documentation link might hold...
>         1. ahhh... an Installation link... ok!
>   3. click on the Installation link and choose the Getting Lazarus link...
>   4. OK, now we're finally getting somewhere after 5 to 10 minutes of
> messing around above looking for a link to get started with...
>   5. we're on a w2k box so let's do the windows method...
>   6. first get and install TortioseSVN, reboot... done...
>   7. now wade back into the wiki and try to find where we were before...
>      ahhh... here it is... now we wade in again...
>   8. read... read... read... ahhh! finally, an installing lazarus link...
>   9. read... read... read... ahhh! finally, a section on compiling and
>      installing from SVN... ok! this looks like what we're after so here we
[..]

Me and Marcos Douglas tried to improve the wiki pages Getting_Lazarus and 
Installing_Lazarus some time ago. Both attempts were half-baked and the result 
is still a mess. The reason is that the existing (already messy) pages were 
modified instead of rewriting the page structure completely.
This is a typical problem with wiki pages. Individual pages are written by 
different people but nobody cares about (or dares to touch) the structure and 
hierarchy of those pages.
I am not happy with the pages but didn't have enough energy or motivation to 
improve them either. Maybe some day... (or maybe you or Marcos Douglas want to 
continue with it).

* What should be done: *

- First, concentrate on the page structure. For example installing Lazarus and 
installing FPC are 2 different things and they should be documented as such.
A link for installation should be on the main wiki page (as you noted).
The following installation page should have links for different platforms, 
separately for Lazarus and FPC, and for different install methods.
There will be many pages and some information must be duplicated, but it is 
still better than one big messy page.

- Easy things should be documented as being easy. For example installing 
Lazarus trunk from SVN using an existing FPC is EASY. For Linux :

$ cd ~
$ svn co http://svn.freepascal.org/svn/lazarus/trunk lazarus
$ cd lazarus
$ make all
$ ./lazarus &

For Windows it is about as easy.
However that is not obvious from the current wiki page.

- Concentrate on the essential. For example installing and using TortoiseSVN 
should NOT be documented at the same page with Lazarus installation 
(naturally).


... and so on ...

Finally the current pages can be linked as history info about how messy the 
installation instructions used to be.

Juha
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.lazarus-ide.org/pipermail/lazarus/attachments/20110209/3b649fcc/attachment-0003.html>