[Python-Dev] Frequency of the dev docs autobuild

["Martin v. Löwis"]

> I wasn't asking for more precision than daily (I just hadn't seen it), but
> now that I think about it it would indeed be nice to know when the cron
> job starts, so that we know that if the checkin didn't happen before then,
> it won't show up in the online docs until the next day.  I don't think
> this is particularly *important* to know, it would just be nice to know.

That's different from asking that it be documented, though. I don't mind
you knowing (it's at 15:00 local time for the build machine, which sits
in the Europe/Amsterdam timezone). Just ask specific questions, and
people may give specific answers. Now that you know, I still don't think
it needs to be documented (else: where would that end? Would you want to
know account name and uid of the build also, and the partition of the
hard disk where the files are stored? Not even I know the rack slot in
which the machine sits).

> 
> Is it only the development versions that get updated, or do our updates
> to the next bug fix release also get posted daily (and those are the docs
> web site visitors normally see, I believe)?

That's what the documentation claims, yes. The build script currently
has these targets:

BRANCHES = [
    # checkout, target, isdev
    (BUILDROOT + '/python26', WWWROOT, False),
    (BUILDROOT + '/python31', WWWROOT + '/py3k', False),
    (BUILDROOT + '/python27', WWWROOT + '/dev', True),
    (BUILDROOT + '/python32', WWWROOT + '/dev/py3k', True),
]

> To answer your question about what wording I'd like, I think that it would
> be worthwhile to say somewhere (not necessarily on that page...maybe in
> the doc README.txt?...but it could be ont that page...) that the docs are
> auto-built by a cron job on the server hosting docs.python.org running
> 'make dist' in the doc directory of a freshly updated checkout and
> then....doing something with the resulting files?

Actually, the command is rather like this:

  'cd Doc; make autobuild-%s' % (isdev and 'dev' or 'stable')

> Background: one of my tasks for one of my customers is helping them try to
> make it so that an outsider coming in could learn everything they needed
> to know to operate the system from the available docs...a goal that they
> are nowhere near achieving, but which I think is a worthwhile goal for
> which to strive.

For this kind of work, I think looking at the actual installation is
more productive to learn how things are done (perhaps opposed to how
they were originally planned to be done). I didn't know how this all
worked myself, either, but, using the root account, it took me only a
minute to find out - much faster than finding the documentation that may
have explained it in detail.

The only starting point that you need is the machine that you know it
runs on.

Regards,
Martin