[Koha-devel] Documentation (was Re: Koha on Ubuntu LTS)

[Mark Tompsett]

Greetings,

Just so that everyone is aware, tcohen and I are in the midst of cleaning up Ubuntu related files: http://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=8478
This includes the documentation. There’s a piece in the INSTALL.ubuntu.12.04 that needs to make its way back to the Wiki: addition of the debian.koha-community.org repository. This is necessary for 3.8.x and newer versions of Koha, as Template::Plugin::HtmlToText does not exist in the default Ubuntu 12.04 repository. I didn’t check Ubuntu 10.04’s default repository.

In the latest version of INSTALL.ubuntu.12.04, the documentation purposefully mentions the three ways to install. There is a link to http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/Koha_3.8_on_Debian_Squeeze for installing from packages. People are also directed to http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/Version_Control_Using_Git for installing from Git. The directions are tarball-based. All three kinds of installs need to be documented. And I would hope to see a little more connect between the pieces, but that hasn’t happened yet.

SIDE THOUGHT: It would be nice to have pieces of OS-dependent pages (for example, setting up the repository) separated out to an OS-independent page, to which the OS-dependent pages link. Any objections if I do that? I’d clean it up from the Ubuntu-side first, so people can see it.
I don’t really think the Koha version plays a huge role in the install instructions, if principles are discussed rather than exact “this will work for <version>” instructions. This includes things like determining where a particular file is found, not necessarily giving an exact path, or showing how to check something because just editing a configuration file may not work the same in every instance. See http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/Koha_on_Ubuntu#MySQL and http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/Koha_on_Ubuntu#Test_to_make_sure_the_SAX_Parser_is_setup_correctly for examples of my attempt at this within the Ubuntu documentation.

1) Decide OS: Debian, Ubuntu, other debian-based OS, or the least attractive option: something else.
2) Decide purpose: development, multi-site, single-site only or OS that is not debian-based
3) Based on (1) & (2), get files (2=development ? git : (1=something else ? tarball : packages))
4) Do configuring (this should overlap between the three types of install)
    a) apache2
    b) MySQL
5) Go to staff client (and follow steps if any)
6) Done!

Anyways in closing, documentation is not as glorious as writing code, from my programmer perspective, but it is most certainly as important. I’d to take this opportunity to thank all those who work on Koha’s documentation. I also appreciate the feedback people have given on my attempts at cleaning up the documentation for Ubuntu.

GPML,
Mark Tompsett
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