[Python-Dev] [Python-checkins] devguide: Strip out all generic svn instructions from the FAQ. It's not only

[Michael Foord]

On 05/01/2011 18:37, Brett Cannon wrote:
> To those that want to keep those steps in the dev FAQ, go ahead but I
> recuse myself from maintaining it. Having had so many instances of
> people asking "how do I do this?" and me almost always able to go
> "read the dev FAQ" has basically made me feel like it is not worth the
> effort if people are not going to bother to check it and just simply
> ask how to do things.

I think you have it backwards. The benefit of having a FAQ is not that 
people read it first (they will almost never do that) but that you have 
a single place to send them when they ask the questions. It sounds like 
it's working! :-)

All the best,

Michael Foord

> The copy of the dev FAQ on the website has not been touched, so me
> cutting this stuff out so I know what has and has not been covered has
> no permanent impact. Plus having the devguide on hg.python.org and not
> the website means anyone with commit rights can modify the devguide,
> including adding/maintaining a dev FAQ on common VCS/SSH/whatever
> tools.
>
> On Wed, Jan 5, 2011 at 01:08, Terry Reedy<tjreedy at udel.edu>  wrote:
>> On 1/5/2011 1:18 AM, Eli Bendersky wrote:
>>> On Wed, Jan 5, 2011 at 04:13, Nick Coghlan<ncoghlan at gmail.com
>>>     Your call as the author, but please reconsider this one. I've found it
>>>     *hugely* convenient over the years to have these task oriented answers
>>>     in the FAQ. The problem with the answers all over the internet is that
>>>     I (or someone new to our source control tool) may not know enough to
>>>     ask the right question, and hence those answers may as well not exist.
>>>     Even if these FAQ answers don't always provide everything needed, they
>>>     usually provide enough information to let me search for the full
>>>     answers.
>>>
>>>
>>> I agree with Nick here. I also found these instructions useful in the
>>> past, although I'm quite familiar with SVN. New devs interested in
>>> contributing to Python but not too familiar with the source-control tool
>>> it's using at the time will benefit even more from this.
>>>
>>> As for maintenance nightmare, I'm sure it's simple enough to attract
>>> contributors. For example, I can volunteer to maintain it.
>> As a complete neophyte at actually using a source code system, I found the
>> stripped-down step-by-step instructions useful even though I am using
>> TortoiseSVN. Even the TortoiseSVN help doc is a bit overwhelming because it
>> includes so much that I do not need to read. It would be a bit like a
>> beginning programmer trying to learn Python from the Langauge Reference
>> without having the Tutorial to read. (And even as an experienced C
>> programmer, I started with the latter.)
>>
>> --
>> Terry Jan Reedy
>>
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