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Off-topic but... > No installation. just download a single file. Is it really so hard for people to provide .rpm/.deb these days? Are man pages extinct as wel

by kylek 11y ago

Off-topic but... > No installation. just download a single file. Is it really so hard for people to provide .rpm/.deb these days? Are man pages extinct as well?

binarycrusader 11y ago
I think it's the typical mindset of a developer to have a directory full of random scripts and utilities and how much "easier" it is to not have "deal with packaging". While I support that being an option, providing packaging is really preferable from a deployment and basic system cleanliness standpoint. Software lifecycle management requires packaging of some form (with the most extreme form being entire images, ala docker, et al., of course).
Spivak 11y ago
I think most developers, mostly correctly, assume that if their software is good and properly licensed that it'll make its way into distros' repositories on their own. Having a simple build process is more helpful to packagers than something already built since distros are just going to repackage it anyway. Also, few developers are intimately familiar with their OS's packaging standards so they're just asking for obscure incompatibilities. Man pages though -- for the love of god we need to keep them alive. No they're not fun to write but they're perhaps the most useful tool in the Linux ecosystem. I write them for all of my projects but I assume I'm in the minority at this point.
- eru 11y ago
  The manpage format isn't even all that great. Their main benefit is that they are available at your fingertips in a common format at the console.
  - Spivak 11y ago
    You're absolutely right, and the syntax is even worse, but the real issue is that we have a standards problem. There's incredible value in having a standard format for technical documentation which is small, concise, easily accessible to everyone, and most importantly has the same layout. If we abandon man pages then every project will ship a different incompatible documentation system which would make the Linux ecosystem overall worse off. More and more documentation is being pushed to the web and/or the offline version is just a dump of the website. It's not bad but everyone has a different interpretation of what good documentation looks like and it requires a relatively modern web browser to view, users have to relearn how it's organized, and projects take the mentality that complete documentation isn't something that should be part of a release rather than the thing that's updated every now and then.
    - eru 11y ago
      Oh, I like man pages, and have written some for my own little projects. I wish we had more man pages for our internal tools at Google. Gnu's `info' was supposed to be the replacement. But I seldom look at their documentation.
- brbsix 11y ago
  I wish there was an easy way to write man pages. Or is there? It might help greater adoption. I've looked into conversion tools like pandoc, which can supposedly convert from other markup types, but it never really seems to turn out well. So far, the only way I've found to create man pages (apart from actually learning the dreaded specs) is to use preexisting ones as templates. Also you're correct about about the packaging. It's not particularly difficult to do basic packaging, but the official maintainers for projects like Debian are very particular (rightly so) and would likely end up redoing the packaging from scratch before accepting it.

by kylek 11y ago

Off-topic but... > No installation. just download a single file. Is it really so hard for people to provide .rpm/.deb these days? Are man pages extinct as well?

binarycrusader 11y ago

I think it's the typical mindset of a developer to have a directory full of random scripts and utilities and how much "easier" it is to not have "deal with packaging". While I support that being an option, providing packaging is really preferable from a deployment and basic system cleanliness standpoint. Software lifecycle management requires packaging of some form (with the most extreme form being entire images, ala docker, et al., of course).

Spivak 11y ago

I think most developers, mostly correctly, assume that if their software is good and properly licensed that it'll make its way into distros' repositories on their own. Having a simple build process is more helpful to packagers than something already built since distros are just going to repackage it anyway. Also, few developers are intimately familiar with their OS's packaging standards so they're just asking for obscure incompatibilities. Man pages though -- for the love of god we need to keep them alive. No they're not fun to write but they're perhaps the most useful tool in the Linux ecosystem. I write them for all of my projects but I assume I'm in the minority at this point.

eru 11y ago
The manpage format isn't even all that great. Their main benefit is that they are available at your fingertips in a common format at the console.
- Spivak 11y ago
  You're absolutely right, and the syntax is even worse, but the real issue is that we have a standards problem. There's incredible value in having a standard format for technical documentation which is small, concise, easily accessible to everyone, and most importantly has the same layout. If we abandon man pages then every project will ship a different incompatible documentation system which would make the Linux ecosystem overall worse off. More and more documentation is being pushed to the web and/or the offline version is just a dump of the website. It's not bad but everyone has a different interpretation of what good documentation looks like and it requires a relatively modern web browser to view, users have to relearn how it's organized, and projects take the mentality that complete documentation isn't something that should be part of a release rather than the thing that's updated every now and then.
  - eru 11y ago
    Oh, I like man pages, and have written some for my own little projects. I wish we had more man pages for our internal tools at Google. Gnu's `info' was supposed to be the replacement. But I seldom look at their documentation.
brbsix 11y ago
I wish there was an easy way to write man pages. Or is there? It might help greater adoption. I've looked into conversion tools like pandoc, which can supposedly convert from other markup types, but it never really seems to turn out well. So far, the only way I've found to create man pages (apart from actually learning the dreaded specs) is to use preexisting ones as templates. Also you're correct about about the packaging. It's not particularly difficult to do basic packaging, but the official maintainers for projects like Debian are very particular (rightly so) and would likely end up redoing the packaging from scratch before accepting it.