Date: Sun, 7 Mar 1999 23:27:54 -0500 (EST) From: "Crist J. Clark" <cjc@cc942873-a.ewndsr1.nj.home.com> To: roelof@eboa.com Cc: cvsup-bugs@polstra.com, questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: CVSup: a newbie's tale. Message-ID: <199903080427.XAA21620@cc942873-a.ewndsr1.nj.home.com> In-Reply-To: <36E34607.9DF90C53@eboa.com> from "roelof@eboa.com" at "Mar 8, 99 04:37:43 am"
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roelof@eboa.com wrote, > I was adviced to run CVSup, so I did. A part of this process was reading > the (on-line) handbook. Though often clear enough I found it kept schtumm > on one seemingly little detail. After describing what to do with the > parameters in some supfile and explaining what they do, it jumped straight > into '18.3.3.4 Running CVSUp'. With the following optimistic words even: > 'You are now ready to try an update.'. Like 'L I am! > > Where is one supposed to put that [...] supfile? No word is wasted on such > a trivial detail. It tells you where to find the example supfile. Great. > But not where the final edition is supposed to reside. 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. [snip story about CVSup not finding the file.] > Perhaps it would be nice to change: > > <<You are now ready to try an update. The command line for doing this is > quite simple: > > cvsup supfile > > where "supfile" is of course the name of the supfile you have just created.>> > > from "the name of" to "the full pathname of" ? 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. > The next thing is about: "Assuming you are running under X11, cvsup > will display a GUI window with some buttons to do the usual things. > Press the "go" button, and watch it run." > > In short, no it won't. I even got up and actually walked to the console > which ran X to execute it. So anctious was I to see that promised GUI > window come up. Might as well have fired it up in the telnets I was > running. Could've saved myself the trip. All 10 paces of it. 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. > Then there is: "Having just created your configuration file, and having > never used this program before, that might understandably make you > nervous.". You have no idea. Actually, telling us the secret location > of the config files would help! 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? > So we come to: > > <<If you are not running X11 or if you just do not like GUIs, you should > add a couple of options to the command line when you run cvsup: > > cvsup -g -L 2 supfile > > The "-g" tells cvsup not to use its GUI. This is automatic if you are not > running X11, but otherwise you have to specify it.>> > > Given the 'understandably nervous' quote above, does this mean I made > some terrible error? I mean it all looked good, but... there was no > promised GUI window to be detected. Not only do I feel cheeted, my > anxiety reaches monumental proportions. Something _is_ wrong if you ran without the '-g' option on a X machine and you did not get the GUI. > Warranted due to: > > <<The "-L 2" tells cvsup to print out the details of all the file updates > it is doing. There are three levels of verbosity, from "-L 0" to "-L 2". > The default is 0, which means total silence except for error messages.>> > > 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. > Last, but not least, we get to the topic of ports. Now imagine if you > would your average nervous newbie. Having never done this before one > reads the handbook with bated breath in the hope of gaining, if not > wisdom, at least heightened awareness of the pitfalls involved. Like, > oh, say, will it mean downloading and thus storing all sources. I.e. > of every available port? This point I must agree with you on. The CVSup tutorial is not all too clear about what is going to be downloaded. > Next step will be the making of a world. But since there's only so much > my nerves can stand I think I'll leave that task to the morrow. If you are nervous, definately do not 'make world.' Try a 'make buildworld' first, then if all goes well, try a 'make installworld.' 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, (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." (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." (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. -- Crist J. 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