Software Management Tutorial

[Stuart Ellis]

On Tue, 16 Nov 2004 15:18:42 -0800 (PST), "Rahul Sundaram"
<rahulsundaram at yahoo.co.in> said:
> 
> this is nice. a few points
> 
> provide screenshots wherever applicable.

The general advice is actually to avoid screenshots wherever possible. 
I think that this may be to reduce maintenance.  The Installation Guide
is exceptional, AFAIK.

> 
> you should explain old yum behavior too which doesnt
> have invidual repos and probably the advantages of
> this setup as a note

I've now added notes about the older versions of yum to the
configuration and repository sections.

> explain yum remove and put a warning on rpm -ivh
> section not to force install packages unless they know
> what they are doing clearly. 

Good point - I've added the warning.  What extra explanation do you feel
is needed for yum remove ?

> what happened to the installation guide btw.  I was
> hoping it would be in the final form when fc3 was
> finished. 

Until recently the Installation Guide was really just a collection of
chapters that I put into Bugzilla, several sections are unwritten or
have outstanding FIXMEs.  The issue is that the advice in the Guide must
be good, so it has to be tested - particularly for things that can fail
in complicated or dangerous ways like upgrades or partitioning.

At the moment I need to check the text against the final release of FC3,
integrate the screenshots provided by Colin Charles and    tidy up
various other bits before doing another build.  After that, the sections
relating to partitioning and RAID are probably the most critical missing
pieces.

I had to revise all my yum notes for FC3 final, so I thought that I'd
put some more effort in and try to produce a proper guide.  Hopefully
this is now complete.

> the mailing lists are
> frequently filled with questions about installation
> and it would nice to just point them to the
> installation guide instead of answering the same stuff
> repeatedly.

I know what you mean.  It was the experience of providing support on a
forum that finally pushed me to start writing documentation.
--
Stuart Ellis
s.ellis at fastmail.co.uk