Hello,
After having gone through the process of getting a new project added to
fink for the first time, I figured I might as well share some of my
thoughts and insights with others. I know that at least in the
projects I work on, it's easy to get lost in the familiarity of your
own creation and that a fresh external perspective is often helpful.
If you don't feel you need that perspective, please feel free to ignore
this.
To give the impatient a short summary, it is something like this: The
Package Manual is a good manual but is really not well suited as a
guide for completely new projects by itself. Being pointed to the
plethora of examples already in fink CVS was a gold mine that was
ultimately what led to success. I'd suggest pointing this out at the
very beginning of the manual, as well as elsewhere on the site.
Long version, let me start by saying that in the end and overall, I
found the process to be relatively reasonable. In hindsight it's not a
complicated process and you guys have done a great job at making a
sticky task manageable.
This was my second stab at trying to figure out just what exactly I
needed to do; the first was several months ago (and was utterly
frustrating). The first time, I went to the website and quickly
located the Package Manual. After reading a fair bit of the manual, it
left me still without any direction of where to actually begin. It
starts describing pieces of a file. Syntax of those pieces,
descriptions of each of those pieces.
All good when said and done, but was rather useless to put it frankly
for my time constraints and focused goal. After putting a couple hours
in and still not ending up with a firm direction of what was needed and
what was not needed, I shelved the task for later or someone else on
our dev team. Sure, had I invested even more time, and rtfm
completely, I would have probably figured it out. The point is,
however, that I shouldn't have had to spend that much time in the first
place. Our project was like a thousand others out there, and I knew
this.
After hearing how quickly another dev set us up with darwinports a
couple days ago, I was once again prodded to get our project into fink.
This time I was intent at putting as little time and effort in as I
could. Not to belittle the situation, but I have better things to do.
This was way down on my list of priorities as I have enough
responsibilities but .. hey, I like fink and actually felt I was doing
us both a service so I figured another try was in order. Take that as
you may.
This time I dropped in to #fink on freenode and conveyed my concerns
about how to get started quickly. I was, of course, pointed to my
dismay to the blasted Package Manual yet again. Even after I explained
how I did not need all the information in there, I was disappointed to
be responded with a defensive and blunt you do need all the
information in there. Before giving up and leaving, I was able to
craft up the question of where I could find existing examples at least.
(recall that I know/knew little nothing about the slew that were
already on my harddrive) I was pointed to cvs, to my delight.
To make a really long story only slightly shorter, I then quickly had a
sample info file prepared in less than 15 minutes after perusing a
dozen or so other projects. That was really all that I needed.
Contrary to the you need to read all the Package Manual demand -- I
didn't.
I did find the manual useful _after_ I had an initial info file for
looking up what a couple keywords meant, but in the end there were only
a handful of questions that I wondered about and they were all quickly
answered by others in #fink later. On that note, it's worth pointing
out that not everyone in #fink was a stickler ;) some have been
incredibly helpful and everyone's time was really appreciated
regardless of any frustration.
What I'm hoping to convey is that 1) the Package Manual, albeit a good
manual, is not well suited to creating a fink info file for the very
first time. A short howto with a complete simple example broken out
would have worked -- a sentance or two pointing me to refer to a dozen
examples in cvs would have worked too. Then if there are still
questions, I can see how it would have been worth it to rtfm in it's
entirety.
That's all I got. Again, I'm hoping to not step on anyones toes, and
I'm not looking for a defensive response or any response for that
matter. If someone can take something useful away from my experience,
great. Keep up the great work guys.
Cheers!
Sean
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