Date: Fri, 28 Jun 2002 08:01:17 -0400 From: Dylan Carlson <absinthe@pobox.com> To: K.J.Koster@kpn.com, inonit@inonit.com Cc: freebsd-java@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Docs and bug reporting (was: A Call to Action) Message-ID: <200206280801.17849.absinthe@pobox.com> In-Reply-To: <59063B5B4D98D311BC0D0001FA7E452205FDA7EE@l04.research.kpn.com> References: <59063B5B4D98D311BC0D0001FA7E452205FDA7EE@l04.research.kpn.com>
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On Thursday 27 June 2002 02:15pm, K.J.Koster@kpn.com wrote: > > I have written a number of web pages (http://www.kjkoster.org/java/) with > howto's and problem descriptions and porting help. If someone would help me > get that text up to date to the current patch sets and expand with > descriptions of known problems and remove the problems that have been > fixed. Nice site. User-contributed docs are obviously wonderful when there isn't anything in the FreeBSD Handbook to speak of. The pages that are in the Handbook now are quite dated, only specific to JDK 1.2. Differences abound since then. For instance, (if I'm not mistaken) the JDK 1.3 is based on the Linux source, unlike JDK 1.2 which uses the Solaris source. I would be willing to help out on an effort to take your documentation as a base, roll it up to the JDK 1.3 level, and make an effort to update it with all the news that is current to the JDK 1.3 patchset. Finally, we would need to take that and express it in DocBook markup, and send it to a committer on the FreeBSD Documentation Project (FDP) to validate it. I would have reservations contributing docs that are not posted to the FreeBSD Handbook. As an aside... It would be useful to get the GNATS maintainer to add a new category in the database for "java". (If that is even permissable.) By doing that, we could minimize some confusion about where to file Java bugs. We would move all the existing PR's under "ports" into "java", and also eliminate the need for hosting a buglist on a foreign site. That's not to say your site and efforts are unappreciated (I wouldn't want you to think that). My opinion is that we should formalize the relationship between FreeBSD and Java by providing current, accurate documentation in the Handbook; and also make sure that _all bugs_ are filed as PR's in FreeBSD's GNATS database. This will free up the people doing the coding from being distracted with high-level communications. The signal-to-noise ratio isn't always good on this list; I believe that's because there's not a good base of java documentation in the Handbook. Bill, Greg, Nate and others seem to be responding to questions on the overall status of the JDK port more than tackling the fundamental issues at play. If we can shelter them a little bit from that noise, they would probably have more time to code and debug; and it would also create an environment more suitable for new committers. Just my thoughts anyway. Let me know if these ideas are amenable to you. Cheers, -- Dylan Carlson [absinthe@pobox.com] To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-java" in the body of the message
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