Re: why is the wiki page on building octave so lacking?

[Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso]

On 16 March 2012 07:20, oz123 <address@hidden> wrote:

> I understand the last manual has to be update with every release,
> but it's no reason to DELETE existing content from the wiki (unless
> is inaccurate or outdated).

The instructions for building Octave should be in the Octave manual.
It is very important that they are very good. If you believe the
manual is inadequate, then please fix the manual. The wiki should be
secondary material for transient content. The manual should still be
the primary source for Octave documentation. It's shipped with Octave,
it's available in PDF and HTML form, and it's included in every source
tarball. The wiki is not included in source tarballs, and the wiki
should not be a replacement for the manual.

There should not be a need for wikis or blog posts for instructions on
how to build Octave. If people find the instructions in the manual
inadequate for building Octave, and pointing them to the manual is not
enough, then the manual needs to be fixed.

If you think the manual is too difficult to fix, then please write the
improvements to the manual in the wiki or however you can, and I will
apply them to the manual.

If you think that it's hopeless to fix the build instructions in the
manual, then I guess we should remove the build instructions from the
manual and restore the ones in the wiki, but updating two diverging
sources of redundant information should definitely not be what we're
doing.

- Jordi G. H.