rpm experiences [was: Backing up whole system]

[Rahul Sundaram]

On 05/10/2009 10:24 PM, Gene Heskett wrote:

>>
>> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_create_an_RPM_package
>>
>> Rahul
> 
> Which, if printed, is still 29 pages, Rahul.

Number of pages is a very meaningless metric to decide the scope of
useful documentation. I have worked as a technical writer and
determining the usefulness or conciseness of a document is a much harder
task than simply counting the number of pages. You can shorten the
number by reducing the size of the font. Would that make it more
concise, suddenly?

Note that above page can be shortened by excluding information or adding
more references but it all depends on the audience.

> Clear and Concise writing seems to be a lost art.  There has been 10x more 
> pages written on rpm now, than Kernigan & Ritchie put in the original C book, 
> but that book, and its successor (I have both) can be used for a demo of how 
> to write clear, concise docs.

K&R C book is reference material. Hardly a beginner introduction. Ask
someone who has actually spend time building both RPM and DEB packages,
which one has been easier and why. Finding a random PDF online and
blaming the tool is hardly the sensible thing to do.  Simplicity is not
the same as simple.

Building software is inherently a complex task. Tools can only help so
far. RPM is only a small part of it. Eventually you will have to learn
different source code management tools (earlier just cvs. now add git,
mercurial and more), compiler and other core utilities (sed, awk, perl
...), build automation tools (again, these keep increasing - autotools,
cmake and so on), build system tools and so on. After years, one will
barely have scratched the surface of the full scope of these.

Rahul