Date: Thu, 11 Mar 1999 21:41:43 -0800 (PST) From: John Polstra <jdp@polstra.com> To: roelof@eboa.com Cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: RE: CVSup: a newbie's tale. Message-ID: <XFMail.990311214143.jdp@polstra.com> In-Reply-To: <36E34607.9DF90C53@eboa.com>
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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. Since I wrote that section of the handbook (not to mention CVSup itself), I guess I owe you a response. :-) > 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. [...] > 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" ? I'm sorry, but I disagree with that proposal. In Unix it has always been understood that "the name" of a file means "whatever it takes to reference it from your current working directory." (For that matter, the same assumption holds even under DOS or Windows.) That's assumed in all of the manual pages -- see cat(1) or ls(1), for example. > 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. It really really will, if it was built and installed right. If you're having problems with it, I'd recommend that you install the "cvsup-bin" port from the "net" category. That's the least trouble-prone one. > 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? > > As it turned out, it doesn't. Which is nice since I only had a mere GB > left on the /usr device. Perhaps it would be an idea to inform the > audience of the scope of what one's about to attempt? Well ... maybe. The tutorial is really about CVSup, not about the details of the ports collection or any of the other files that you can fetch. Information about those things is elsewhere. It's important to realize that CVSup and make world really aren't intended for new users. Either one can get you into trouble unless you have a certain level of familiarity with Unix. Maybe that's something I should make more clear in the tutorial. I think you should use FreeBSD for awhile and become more familiar with it before you start trying make worlds in particular. You'll feel a lot less nervous about it once you are more comfortable with the system. > PS this is not intended as negative criticism ... No problem -- it didn't seem negative at all to me. > but as a way to inform the maintainers of the various appreciated > tidbits of my experiences when I first tried said tidbits. Something > you can only do once. Too true! Thanks for the comments. John --- John Polstra jdp@polstra.com John D. Polstra & Co., Inc. Seattle, Washington USA "Self-interest is the aphrodisiac of belief." -- James V. DeLong To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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