Ports' tips and gotchas

[Vlad K.]

On 2017-01-03 17:43, Adam Weinberger wrote:
> 
> pkg-message needs to contain only essential information, otherwise
> end-users will start to ignore them. I agree that tips should be
> shared, but putting it into SVN isn't the way to go.


That's something along the lines of what I was thinking, but wasn't 
sure. Indeed if we start adding tips to pkg-message, where's the end of 
it.

However, in the case of my Postgres patch, it's something the user 
should be aware of BEFORE they do the initdb step, as once initialized, 
you can't change it for that cluster, without dumping the database, 
re-initializing and restoring, that's why I wanted to add it there.

Unfortunately, random blogs and websites are not good enough because the 
information is "out there" and not immediately presented. However, now 
that you mention it, adding wiki entries and then having a pkg-message 
contain something along the lines of "Please consult 
https://wiki.freebsd.org/Foo/Bar for important information before you 
init/start/configure/migrate/update, ..." is a valid alternative and I 
like it. In fact, I'll be reworking my Postgres patch to do just that, 
and create an entry for Roundcube.

However, what would be the best way to approach this via the FreeBSD 
wiki? I'm sure that random wiki pages in various users' namespaces is 
not quite the right thing to do. There currently are some ports Wiki 
pages but they're all over the place and not nicely organized.

Perhaps it is time we start a special Ports namespace that would allow 
us to collate and list in one place all the user submitted wisdom and 
important instructions?



-- 
Vlad K.