Re: why is the wiki page on building octave so lacking?

[Richard Crozier]

On 15/03/2012 00:53, Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso wrote:
> On 14 March 2012 19:25, Oz Nahum Tiram <address@hidden> wrote:
>> I've noticed that the wiki page
>> http://www.octave.org/wiki/index.php?title=Build_from_source
>> has been significantly trimmed.
>> I also realize that most of the stuff is now migrated into the
>> official documentation,
> 
> Actually, it was always in the documentation. The wiki page just a
> copied from the stuff in the manual. If we are going to be maintaining
> documentation, I'd rather maintain only one copy of it, not keep two
> independent copies updated.
> 
> Furthermore, each Octave release needs its own set of build
> instructions. It's important to version the build instructions
> alongside the Octave release they're documenting.
> 
> If maintaining the actual Octave documentation is too laborious (i.e.
> if the "make a changeset" barrier is too high), perhaps we can work
> out something else.
> 
> - Jordi G. H.
> 

The problem isn't the changeset barrier, it's that the existing
documentation is not easy to find (e.g. you have to scroll down through
440 lines of text on the html manual before you come to the installing
Octave section, tucked away in Appendix G). Personally I would also have
called this section 'installing octave from source', or, 'building
octave from source', as this is not how most users will 'install' octave
I think.

Also the formatting of the online docs is ugly and hard to read for
users used to modern formating such a wikipedia etc. The text is also
extremely disjointed, for example the Installing Octave link leads to a
page with 2 lines of text and four more links. The first link on this
page ('Build Dependencies', which I would have called 'Obtaining
Octave's Build Dependencies' incidentally) leads to another page with 2
lines of text and three links. The first of these is 'Tips for Specific
Systems', the first line on this page states:

"The names of pre-compiled packages vary by system and do not always
match exactly the names listed above."

But no names have yet been mentioned, or packages, or anything, these
are all in the links following the link to 'Tips for Specific Systems'
on the previous page.

Richard



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