X-Recipient: archive-cygwin AT delorie DOT com X-SWARE-Spam-Status: No, hits=-2.0 required=5.0 tests=AWL,BAYES_00,DKIM_SIGNED,DKIM_VALID,RCVD_IN_DNSWL_LOW X-Spam-Check-By: sourceware.org Message-ID: <4C939F7A.1020902@cwilson.fastmail.fm> Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2010 13:03:54 -0400 From: Charles Wilson Reply-To: Charles Wilson User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.2; en-US; rv:1.9.2.9) Gecko/20100825 Thunderbird/3.1.3 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com Subject: Re: simplifying rebaseall References:

<4C938040 DOT 3080704 AT cwilson DOT fastmail DOT fm> <4C9389EA DOT 7050704 AT cygwin DOT com> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Mailing-List: contact cygwin-help AT cygwin DOT com; run by ezmlm List-Id: List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: cygwin-owner AT cygwin DOT com Mail-Followup-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com Delivered-To: mailing list cygwin AT cygwin DOT com On 9/17/2010 12:18 PM, Al wrote: >> >> And it invites casual use without understanding the what and why. This >> means >> more people using it for no reason and more problems using it when it is >> needed because people don't understand the requirements to make it work >> (i.e. *nobody* will read the readme... wait, there's a readme? ;-) ). >> > > Hmm, how does information work currently? Almost EVERYTHING in cygwin has a README. Take a look in /usr/share/doc/Cygwin sometime. Furthermore many packages (but not rebase) have additional documentation in /usr/share/doc/$PKG/ -- just like on linux. > I found the hint to run > rebase somewhere in a blog, when I was hunting down a bug. Others will > be told on this list to run rebase all without the hint of a readme. Because most people, when told to 'run rebaseall' will say to themselves "I don't know how to run rebaseall. I wonder if it has a help option..." $ rebaseall --help rebaseall: only ash or dash processes are allowed during rebasing Exit all Cygwin processes and stop all Cygwin services. Execute ash (or dash) from Start/Run... or a cmd or command window. Execute '/bin/rebaseall' from ash (or dash). No...but that's a pretty descriptive error message. However, I still want more information. Maybe there's a man page: $ man rebaseall No manual entry for rebaseall $ man rebase No manual entry for rebase Info page? $ info rebaseall $ info rebase No. Well, there must be SOME documentation somewhere. I know: I'll look in the /usr/share/doc $ ls /usr/share/doc/*rebase* ls: cannot access /usr/share/doc/*rebase*: No such file or directory No. Well, Cygwin puts some documentation in /usr/share/doc/Cygwin, so I better look there: $ ls /usr/share/doc/Cygwin/*rebase* /usr/share/doc/Cygwin/rebase-3.0.1.README A-HA! Now, surely that is a lot of hunting around -- but I can only assume that many people did so, since you are apparently the first person to fail to locate the documentation when faced with the question "How do I run rebaseall"? > You can verify this be reading the lists archive. The only hint you > find in the FAQ is below the topic "Terminal Server machine". Who is > finding that? Should we put "If you have a question about package foo, be sure and look in /usr/share/doc/foo*/ and at /usr/share/doc/Cygwin/foo* for more information" in the signature line of every message? > I wouldn't even have an idea how to find and read this readme while > using ash. See above. Most of that should be very familiar to a person with "10 years of Linux experience" -- except for the bit about "Cygwin packages often put a cygwin-specific README file in /usr/share/doc/Cygwin/" Maybe THAT tidbit should go in the FAQ...but I doubt the Questioned is Frequently Asked in this form: "Where can I find additional information about specific Cygwin packages". No, the question would be asked "Where can I get more information about foo" or "...rebase" or "..gcc" or "...wget" So, even if the FAQ *did* have the following: Q: Where can I find additional information about specific Cygwin packages? A: Look in /usr/share/doc/Cygwin/. Most cygwin packages put some cygwin-specific information in a README file located in that directory. ...you still wouldn't have found it -- unless you are in the habit of reading FAQs from top-to-bottom (I'm not...). > If there is a danger that people run rebase all without reading the > readme, there is a similar danger that people give up Cygwin, before > they ever discover that they could solve their issues by running > rebaseall. Look, we recognize that this rebase issue has cause *you* heartburn. It annoys us too, but thanks to Bill G, we can't really do anything about it. But, what you have to realize is -- it *does not* always occur. Not *every* user is impacted by it. Many users might use cygwin for years and NEVER see the dreaded "unable to remap" error. Those people would be in danger of accidentally (or curiously) clicking a shortcut called 'rebase'. The pain of THAT far outweighs the tiny convenience, for a small population of unfortunate newbies, that might need to run rebase but are not yet experienced enough to know all about it. (Worse, we simply CAN'T create a shortcut if the rebase problem hits 'bash' -- all such postinstall scripts themselves will fail with the remap error!) -- Chuck -- Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/ Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple