Re: Installation error - new install

["David Tangye" <..hidden..>]

Thanks Liz. I have since found that doc and wondered about 'Build'. I have never used cpan before, so what its meant to do, and how to use it is a mystery to me.

Chris: Hi there.
I installed by following instructions in the INSTALL file. My problem, which others could have was that INSTALL says to read 
README.debian.  In there it does not specify any command "Build". This line _is_ specified in dists/deb/cpan_requisites.txt, but README.debian does not say anything about cpan_requisites.txt, so I had no reason to look there. Also I think both places need to have a command like 'exit' specified too, so new users of cpan would know how to get out of the cpan interpreter. But why all these files anyway, with duplication and near-duplication (ie divergence) in them?

I think I have read almost every doc/tex/html/README... etc etc file in the lsmb distribution now. 
At a minimum I looked on the website, many mail list messages for current bugs and issues, then in the unpacked distribution (tarfile) in INSTALL, an FAQ, READMEs, TODO and BUGS etc, and _still_ missed something! Hmm, I did not look at any bug database anywhere. New users don't want to have to conduct a long involved hunt the sift every time they think about installing something. Running this Ubuntu system, if I want to install anything I expect to read the essentials from the package manager, click the button and its installed and configured. Click its Help and all I need appears. That's it.

It would be nice to have everything in slightly better order, and less places to look. Something like:

1. One complete System Admin Guide: Include all installation/upgrading/converting stuff, configuring stuff that is not handled from the browser interface, plus the stuff that the Admin screens handle.
2. One complete Users Guide: Include all details and theory of using the system, ie focuses on the accounting screens. ie what an accounting person is concerned with. No software-technical terms should be here at all.

Get rid of absolutely everything else, eg FAQs: if system-admin related put it in the Admin Guide, if its related to  accounting put it into the Users Guide.

Keep a master of each in one place only. then, if a couple of sections need to be copied as for a limited number of READMEs and an FAQ (see next) eg in flat ascii and/or html format for publishing on a website, then at least keep the master and copies in sync. Update the master only, and regenerate the copies. Include a reference as footnote in the copy back to the master.

The two docs above need to be published as html, so accessed from the runtime system. It should be easy to make them context sensitive. One from the normal screens, and the other from the Admin login screen for pre-installation specs, and from the Admin screens, for all the post-installation stuff.

FAQs: I really hate them. They always start out good, and dissolve into a mess of anything and everything that ever was an issue with someone at any point in time. I have seen so many FAQ, that have become in essence an extremely poorly disorganised "manual". If you are going to have one, keep it really current, and really small. A mailing list is a better replacement for an FAQ IMO. (So might be a forum-sticky or wiki for that matter: neither of which would I recommend here though.) If I had to have a FAQ, perhaps I would have a single entry in it: "Where can I find more info?" "A: the manuals (quote the url), or B the mail list (quote the url)".

Hmmm, I am sure I mentioned this months ago.

On 8/26/07, Liz Young <..hidden..> wrote:

Hi David,

On Sat August 25 2007 9:11:24 am David Tangye wrote:
> What's gone wrong? What's Module/Build.pm?

I see that your installation is already working, so for the archives:
On feisty, that module is provided by the libmodule-build-perl package.

The requirement (Build) is documented in the file "cpan_requisites.txt" under
ledgersmb/dists/deb .

Liz

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc.
Still grepping through log files to find problems?  Stop.
Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser.
Download your FREE copy of Splunk now >>   http://get.splunk.com/
_______________________________________________
Ledger-smb-users mailing list
..hidden..
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ledger-smb-users

-- 
The Last Great Frontier is in Your Mind