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Re: potato -> woody upgrade not smooth...



On Thu, Jul 05, 2001 at 03:42:10PM +0200, Joost Kooij wrote:
> 
> The problem is when people do not even know about dpkg anymore.  When 
> they don't know about dselect (or any of its announced alternatives) or 
> its purpose.  It implies that they are unaware of the essences of the 
> debian package management system.  That worries me a lot more than the
> package format adopted by some committee.

You shouldn't be surprised.  Read the Installation Manual, and you'll
see that dpkg isn't even mentioned.  Dselect is mentioned, but as
something which is hard to use (which is true, for new users).  The
only Debian package management system which is mentioned is apt-get,
and then only in passing.  Even apt-cache isn't mentioned, which is a
pity, since it's such a useful tool.

One of the problems with Debian is that is that it has lots and lots
of layers: apt-cache, apt-get, dpkg, dselect, dpkg-reconfigure,
dpkg-deb, debhelper, debconf, etc.  This wouldn't be too terrible a
problem, except that there's no good overall documentation about how
the various difference pieces interact, and how various different
tasks should be accomplished.  All the information you need is
*somehere* in hundreds of man pages.  But how the various pieces
connect together is something which is passed on only by oral
tradition, as near as I can tell.

For example, it was a quite a while of my using a Debian system before
I even *discovered* the existence of apt-cache, and then only because
a friend of mine who was a Debian developer mentioned it to me.  I
similarly stumbled over dpkg-reconfigure.  Before then, I had
absolutely no clue how to get back to package configuration screens if
I wanted to change things.  (There's no mention of dpkg-reconfigure in
any of the obvious manual pages.  As far as I know, you simply have to
be lucky and find it while investigating something completely
unrelated, or be a mind reader.)

If you want to fix the problem about people not knowing about dpkg,
then someone needs to write a high-level document which explains all
of the different layers and byways and programs and historical
accidents (which is why dpkg-reconfigure isn't dpkg --reconfigure, so
I understand) which are available in Debian, and how they interact,
and how commonly available tasks which a system administrator might
want to do can be most easily accomplished.  Then, link it to the
"Getting Started" section of Debian Web page.

Someone might also want to think about improving the Installation
Manual, which is supposed "suitable for new users".  In particular,
section 8.2, "Orienting yourself to Debian", is particularly weak.
Try to put yourself in the mindframe of a new user who has no idea
about the ins and outs of the Debian package management system (even
if the new user has over 15 years of experience with Unix), and then
read that section, and weep.  (Or gnash your teeth in frustration,
which is what I did.)

						- Ted



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