Re: New developer papercut - Makefile references INSTALL

On Mon, Jan 17, 2022 at 11:17 AM Daniel Gustafsson <daniel@yesql.se> wrote:
>
> > On 17 Jan 2022, at 02:11, Tim McNamara <tim@mcnamara.nz> wrote:
> >
> > Hello,
> >
> > I encountered a minor road bump when checking out the pg source today. The Makefile's all target includes the
followinghelp message if GNUmakefile isn't available:
 
> >
> >  echo "You need to run the 'configure' program first. See the file"; \
> >  echo "'INSTALL' for installation instructions." ; \
> >
> > After consulting README.git, it looks as though INSTALL isn't created unless the source is bundled into a release
orsnapshot tarball. I'm happy to submit a patch to update the wording, but wanted to check on the preferred approach.
 
> >
> > Perhaps this would be sufficient?
> >
> >  echo "You need to run the 'configure' program first. See the file"; \
> >  echo "'INSTALL' for installation instructions, or visit" ; \
> >  echo "<https://www.postgresql.org/docs/devel/installation.html>" ; \
>
> That's a good point, and one few developers are likely to spot so thanks for
> raising the issue.  To avoid replicating the wording we can do something like
> the attached as well.

Nitpick: It reads very strange to do the existence check negative.
Since you're filling a value in both the positive and negative branch
it seems more logical with an "if -f" and then reversed order of the
branches.

That said, I'm not sure we're actually gaining anything by *not*
referring to the website as well. TBH, I bet the majority of users
will actually prefer to read them there. So I'd suggest always
including the reference to the website as well, per the suggestion
from Tim.

-- 
 Magnus Hagander
 Me: https://www.hagander.net/
 Work: https://www.redpill-linpro.com/