[Mailman-Developers] Error: Couldn't install: storm 0.19

Stephen J. Turnbull stephen at xemacs.org
Thu May 3 05:53:33 CEST 2012


On Thu, May 3, 2012 at 11:57 AM, David <dave at fiteyes.com> wrote:

> Is this the right place for a suggestion on minor documentation changes?

> I actually needed build-essential and python-dev packages in addition to
> the python package that came with the default Ubuntu install on Linode.

Ubuntu is popular, but not that popular that this kind of change will
stop here.  This is really basic knowledge that IMO is reasonable for
our docs to presume (anybody who is installing beta software is going
to run into real issues sooner or later).  So it isn't a minor change,
it's a move in the direction of becoming a site for educating novice
sysadmins, and we're going to end up providing similar HOWTOs for
RHEL, Debian, ... (hopefully not Gentoo or ArchLinux, of course;-).

I don't have an objection to doing that, if somebody wants to put it
together.  I think it's quite plausible that Mailman 3 will be the
first experience for many source-build virgins.  But my experience
with Emacsen suggests that people who are running into the
"Windows-wannabe distros can't build software" issue is better
addressed by a separate *set* of *distro-specific* documents (it might
be in one file with per-distro sections, of course).  Putting this
stuff into the quick-start or full install guide is just going to
deter novices and annoy experienced sysadmins.

Better yet would be a section of the FAQ pointing to a generic site
for "So ya wanna be a beta tester" documents, but I suspect that
doesn't exist.


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