Open Stack

Excerpts from Lana Brindley's message of 2016-03-24 08:50:49 +1000:
> On 24/03/16 08:01, Doug Hellmann wrote:
> > Excerpts from Lana Brindley's message of 2016-03-24 07:14:35 +1000:
> >> Hi Mike, and sorry I missed you on IRC to discuss this there. That said, I think it's great that you took this to the mailing list, especially seeing the conversation that has ensued.
> >>
> >> More inline ...
> >>
> >> On 24/03/16 01:06, Mike Perez wrote:
> >>> Hey all,
> >>>
> >>> I've been talking to a variety of projects about lack of install guides. This
> >>> came from me not having a great experience with trying out projects in the big
> >>> tent.
> >>>
> >>> Projects like Manila have proposed install docs [1], but they were rejected
> >>> by the install docs team because it's not in defcore. One of Manila's goals of
> >>> getting these docs accepted is to apply for the operators tag
> >>> ops:docs:install-guide [2] so that it helps their maturity level in the project
> >>> navigator [3].
> >>>
> >>> Adrian Otto expressed to me having the same issue for Magnum. I think it's
> >>> funny that a project that gets keynote time at the OpenStack conference can't
> >>> be in the install docs personally.
> >>>
> >>> As seen from the Manila review [1], the install docs team is suggesting these
> >>> to be put in their developer guide.
> >>
> >> As Steve pointed out, these now have solid plans to go in. That was because both projects opened a conversation with us and we worked with them over time to give them the docs they required.
> >>
> >>>
> >>> I don't think this is a great idea. Mainly because they are for developers,
> >>> operators aren't going to be looking in there for install information. Also the
> >>> Developer doc page [4] even states "This page contains documentation for Python
> >>> developers, who work on OpenStack itself".
> >>
> >> I agree, but it's a great place to start. In fact, I've just merged a change to the Docs Contributor Guide (on the back of a previous mailing list conversation) that explicitly states this:
> >>
> >> http://docs.openstack.org/contributor-guide/quickstart/new-projects.html
> > 
> > I think you're missing that most of us are disagreeing that it is
> > a good place to start. It's fine to have the docs in a repository
> > managed by the project team. It's not good at all to publish them
> > under docs.o.o/developer because they are not for developers, and
> > so it's confusing. This is why we ended up with a different place
> > for release notes to be published, instead of just adding reno to
> > the existing developer documentation build, for example.
> > 
> 
> All docs need to be drafted somewhere. I don't care where that is, but make the suggestion of /developer because at least it's accessible there, and also because it's managed in the project's own repo. If you want to create a different place, or rename /developer to be more inclusive, I think that's a great idea.

I think we'll want to add a new location, or publish to a similar
location to the existing install guide. I found, for example
http://docs.openstack.org/mitaka/install-guide-ubuntu/

If we take ironic as the example, and assume all OS-types would be
covered in one manual, we could make that:

(1) http://docs.openstack.org/mitaka/ironic/install-guide/
(2) http://docs.openstack.org/ironic/mitaka/install-guide/
(3) http://docs.openstack.org/install-guide/ironic/
(4) http://docs.openstack.org/ironic/install-guide/

I like options 3 and 4. To keep things simple for the project teams,
I think we want to skip including the release series in the base
URL.  As the instructions change, projects may need to create
separate sub-sections of their guide for each series, but they
should be able to do that without having to set up separate publishing
locations and jobs.

Another benefit of options 3 and 4 is that as the ironic team
produces other guides, those can go under a consistent URL that
makes it relatively simple to set up a generic publishing job for
all projects. Option 4 does have the benefit of making it easy to
have a page at http://docs.openstack.org/ironic/ linking to all of
the guides the ironic team has published.

Thoughts?

> > Right. The solution to that isn't to say "we aren't going to document
> > it at all" or "publish the documentation somewhere less ideal",
> > though, which is what it sounds like we're doing now.  It's to say
> 
> Actually, I said that I acknowledge that isn't working, and we need to find a different solution.

OK, that wasn't clear to me from your message that continued to suggest
publishing to a location under /developer.

Doug