Date: Mon, 08 Mar 1999 06:50:43 +0100 From: Roelof Osinga <roelof@eboa.com> To: cjclark@home.com Cc: cvsup-bugs@polstra.com, questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: CVSup: a newbie's tale. Message-ID: <36E36533.B41DE3AA@eboa.com> References: <199903080427.XAA21620@cc942873-a.ewndsr1.nj.home.com>
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"Crist J. Clark" wrote: > > It should reside wherever you'd like to put it. Personally, I cp the > original example to a file with '.orig' appended, modify the example > as I see fit, and then just leave it in the example directory. If you > prefer, you could keep it in /usr/src or /root, anywhere. Nah, just edited it with vi, trusting CVSup would not update the very file it was reading at the time. Something, b.t.w., I've seen so called 'smart' update programs do <g>. The point was, however, the average newbie won't know that. A recipe should state what kind of spoon to use! > It does not need to be the full pathname. If the file is in the pwd, > all you need to type is its name. CVSup is just like most other commands, > it will look for the file in the pwd unless an absolute path is > given. Again, a recipe should state - exactly - what spoon to use. Not say, throw a spoon of salt into the soup to bring it up to taste. Whose taste, what spoon? Sea salt or kitchen salt? > Huh? You didn't get the the lil' GUI window? No window at all? There > is one. Something is wrong if you did not get when run on a machine > with X running. Did the machine you compiled it on have X? If you > don't compile in X support, running on a machine with X will do you no > good. Not that I could see. The daft thing just started spewing messages to the xterm (note: *XTERM* !!! :). Could it have something to do with me using 'script' as suggested on the .uk website? > Secret location of the files? You mean the ones in > /usr/share/examples/cvsup? You already were told where they are and > had edited your own by this point, right? Wrong. E.g. how could an Unix boot without knowing where to find its resource configuration files? So, how can a cvsup run without knowing where to find *its* configuration files? Pointing to $PWD is like saying: 'Ah, don't you worry your pretty little ol' head about where to put that ol' /etc/host file. As long as it's in the $PWD it'll be just fine!'. Like 'L it will! Again, this is about documentation. Unix is very much a structured system, even though you wouldn't say so from the looks of it <g>. Yet the position of this little ol' file is unknown. Should one put it in /root or /usr/user, maybe fashionable /home/user or perhaps /etc. No, wait! It ought to be /usr/local/etc! Oops, sorry, no make that /usr/local/etc/cvsup/etc/supfile! See what I mean? Remember, we're talking nervous newbies here! > Something _is_ wrong if you ran without the '-g' option on a X machine > and you did not get the GUI. I keep tellin' y'all ;) > > There's no telling what informative error messages I might've missed. > > Not really. If no GUI popped up, then two things could happen. (1) The > machine, for whatever reason, decided you did not have X and did not > open the GUI. In which case, errors get directed to the stderr of the > term you entered the command at. (2) The GUI popped up in never-never > land. In this case, you needed to push the 'start' button to get > things going. You could not have started the GUI, and thus could not > have missed error messages on it. Ok, so maybe stderr got 'scriped' as well as written to the xterm. But how is a newbie to know? It got started allright, got the compile messages flowing around my ears. > This point I must agree with you on. The CVSup tutorial is not all too > clear about what is going to be downloaded. One down, many to go ;). Remember, I wrote this down following my first encounter. I'm virginal. It's all very good and well for you, experienced as you are, to say that it's not as big as it looks; but I'm just not that sure about that! :) > If you are nervous, definately do not 'make world.' Try a 'make > buildworld' first, then if all goes well, try a 'make installworld.' The handbook refers to a website. The website listed that, well, too late <g>. To wit '5.2 Saving the output': <<# script /var/tmp/mw.out Script started, output file is /var/tmp/mw.out # make world … compile, compile, compile … # exit Script done, … >> It's only in 5.4 that it says 'make world' is outdated. Like, Oops, *now* you say teaspoon instead of spoon. Another thing is that it would be preferable to have that part made part of the handbook. You don't always have access to the 'Net. > Your criticism is legitimate, but I think that rather than make all of > the changes you propose, the tutorial could cover your problems by > saying something along the lines, I only made one (1) software change proposal, to wit, having a well known location of the supfile. Like, say, /etc/supfile. Nothing fancy, mind. The rest was indeed directed toward the handbook. > (1) "You should keep your customized supfiles in a place of your own > choosing (/usr/src, /root, or even keep them in > /usr/share/examples/cvsup), but remember that you must tell cvsup how > to find them by using an absolute pathname or having them in the > present working directory when the command is executed." Way too weak. Goes against the very thing /etc stands for! > (2) "CVSup will provide a GUI window if executed on a machine with > X running, AND CVSup was compiled on a machine with X installed." My system - 3.1-RELEASE - disagrees with you on that one. > (3) Give the new user an idea of the number of and volume of files > that he will be downloading. The one line descriptions of the various > CVSup file collections (even combined with the example supfiles) are > inadequate. Hear, hear <g> Roelof -- Home is where the (@) http://eboa.com/ is. 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