| 1 |
On Tue, Nov 22, 2005 at 07:47:11PM +0100, Danny van Dyk wrote: |
| 2 |
[... About the stage1/2 instructions in the Gentoo FAQ ...] |
| 3 |
> That's currently a stub. If i recall right, Swift mentioned on #-dev |
| 4 |
> that he'd need to refurbish this. |
| 5 |
|
| 6 |
Lots of heat again. Good thing, because it is quite cold here in Belgium. |
| 7 |
|
| 8 |
When I originally created the Gentoo Handbook, I hoped that it would contain |
| 9 |
all Gentoo-specific documentation in one place: the installation |
| 10 |
instructions for all architectures, all possible methods. However, that |
| 11 |
first attempt had its fundamental flaws, the major one being the stupid |
| 12 |
believe that users wouldn't mind reading about other architectures if they |
| 13 |
are well guided through the instructions. |
| 14 |
|
| 15 |
So the Handbook changed and split. Architecture-specific instructions were |
| 16 |
moved to separate files and each architecture had its own handbook even |
| 17 |
though many parts of it were shared, allowing the Gentoo Documentation |
| 18 |
Project to maintain all Handbooks without having one or more of them become |
| 19 |
too outdated easily (which was what happened with the separate installation |
| 20 |
guides). |
| 21 |
|
| 22 |
Yet this attempt still had its difficulties: when the Release Engineering |
| 23 |
team decided that a quarterly release was too stressful (they had to do more |
| 24 |
packaging and deployment rather than research and development) they also |
| 25 |
made the Gentoo Documentation Project split the handbooks in two: one which |
| 26 |
contained the Internet-based installation instructions, using the latest |
| 27 |
stable packages (baselayout), while the other handbook contained the |
| 28 |
instructions that were statically bound to a certain release. |
| 29 |
|
| 30 |
This was needed because, at that time, Gentoo had a history of changing core |
| 31 |
system configuration too often making it too darn difficult to keep the |
| 32 |
Handbook in good shape. Right now, I believe that those causes are invalid |
| 33 |
and that the separate handbooks can be combined again, especially with the |
| 34 |
request to move the stage1/2 instructions elsewhere. |
| 35 |
|
| 36 |
I was quite reluctant to move the instructions at first, but when I found |
| 37 |
out that the instructions were indeed not perfect, I had two choices: either |
| 38 |
update the instructions in the Handbook to be correct, or move the |
| 39 |
instructions outside the Handbook first (making sure that the official |
| 40 |
installation instructions remain bugfree) and write a separate guide on |
| 41 |
bootstrapping. |
| 42 |
|
| 43 |
Based on the input I've gathered from the gentoo-doc mailinglist, |
| 44 |
gentoo-releng mailinglist, Gentoo Forums and various other sources it was |
| 45 |
quite obvious that a *very* *short* amount of users was aware of the theory |
| 46 |
(and practice) behind bootstrapping. In fact, most saw "stage-1" as the |
| 47 |
online drug to increate their, quoting Xavier Neys, "ePenis". And not only |
| 48 |
that, but I also found that I personally lacked the knowledge to write |
| 49 |
something decent about bootstrapping. |
| 50 |
|
| 51 |
Therefore I decided to move the instructions that were in the Gentoo |
| 52 |
Handbook to the Gentoo FAQ in the first place. I intended to have the FAQ be |
| 53 |
accurate with the information I already had without losing anything |
| 54 |
important. I did miss something in that procedure, namely the change of the |
| 55 |
CHOST variable, but other than that the FAQ contains the same instructions |
| 56 |
as were in the Gentoo Handbook. |
| 57 |
|
| 58 |
The next step for me was (and still is) to investigate what bootstrapping by |
| 59 |
itself means. Why whould anyone need to rebuild this toolchain twice? I |
| 60 |
could perfectly understand why it was needed the first time, but why the |
| 61 |
second time? The only reason I could give myself was that it was to test the |
| 62 |
toolchain: if it can rebuild itself, it can build all other packages. |
| 63 |
|
| 64 |
After finally figuring out what bootstrapping is (with input from a nice |
| 65 |
forum thread in the "Gentoo Chat" department, information gathered from the |
| 66 |
GCC mailinglist and some dev prodding online) I am now trying to work out a |
| 67 |
reasonable scenario as to why someone would bootstrap his system as an |
| 68 |
example for the guide. |
| 69 |
|
| 70 |
You might be wondering why I didn't first write the damn guide and /then/ |
| 71 |
update the Gentoo Handbook. Two reasons are behind this. First, the Gentoo |
| 72 |
Release Engineering project has asked me to do so, and they were kind enough |
| 73 |
to give reasons (like bugreports, but also the theoretical problem with the |
| 74 |
bootstrapping/system stuff, circular dependency stuff, etc.). The |
| 75 |
installation instructions and the release engineering project are two hands |
| 76 |
that should always work together and any discrepancy between them would lead |
| 77 |
to confusion of the user. |
| 78 |
|
| 79 |
The second one is my personal motivation: I want to be certain that users |
| 80 |
/comprehend/ what they are doing rather than blindly copying over |
| 81 |
instructions from one screen to another. We've had (and still have) lots of |
| 82 |
users break their initial installation because they "forgot" to edit their |
| 83 |
/etc/fstab. For a documentation writer, this is unacceptable. Any failed |
| 84 |
installation is seen by me as either a (1.) very stupid user, or (2.) |
| 85 |
failure on my part to document the instructions well. |
| 86 |
|
| 87 |
This is my motivation, and this motivation is mine. |
| 88 |
|
| 89 |
Sincerely, |
| 90 |
|
| 91 |
Sven Vermeulen |
| 92 |
|
| 93 |
-- |
| 94 |
Gentoo Foundation Trustee | http://foundation.gentoo.org |
| 95 |
Gentoo Documentation Project Lead | http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/gdp |
| 96 |
Gentoo Council Member |
| 97 |
|
| 98 |
The Gentoo Project <<< http://www.gentoo.org >>> |
Archives