On 12/14/2014 07:23 PM, Jo Rhett wrote: > I’m not sure where you are looking. I’m at > https://www.bestpractical.com/rt/extensions.html and it links to > https://metacpan.org/pod/RT::Extension::SLA without #INSTALLATION.
Sorry -- I did not mean to imply that our link contained the #INSTALLATION anchor, merely pointing out that the SLA extension does contain what I believe to be clear installation instructions. I choose to believe that users are capable of scrolling down to the third heading on the page. > It seems you’ve updated this to link to MetaCPAN now. That does look > better, but I’m not sure that the “Source Code” link is truly an > improvement, for a reason I’ll describe in my next reply below (read > down) I agree that most users won't need the github link; it is mostly superfluous, as metacpan provides it in most cases. I've removed it for all of the extensions which are on CPAN, which is most of them. >> Can you point me at documentation which suggests downloading one >> file from CPAN and putting it in place manually? Perl's own core >> documentation (http://perldoc.perl.org/perlmodinstall.html ) >> suggests: > > And this is the core issue that both you and Alex Peters seem to be > hung up on, which I keep addressing over and over again but it’s not > getting through. Let me try another way. I was not trying to argue that we cannot make this simpler for new users -- I agree that we can, and should. I was primarily addressing what seemed to be your belief that most CPAN modules could be installed via copying a single file, or that this was a widely documented custom for CPAN modules. I hear you that modules in other languages are often more straightforward to install than Perl's -- and that while our bar for installation is currently set at the same as Perl's, that is not to say that we cannot do better. > So let’s start at the top of extensions try to follow the clear > process for each one. For this I’m going to exclusively use modules > provided by Best Practical. That list has absolutely needed better curation for a while; for instance, it didn't list 4.2 compatibility for the majority of the extensions. Thank for calling out some of the entries that need updating, and providing impetus for fixing them. > https://metacpan.org/pod/RT::Extension::ActivityReports#INSTALLATION > — does not link to installation as you suggested above — forgets to > mention that you need "-I /opt/rt4/lib” so fails on my fresh 4.2.9 > installation Where did you find you needed to add -I /opt/rt4/lib ? With a fresh 4.2.9 in /opt/rt4, the installation instructions work fine for me: https://chmrr.net/nopaste/2014-12-15l4EVqmFw > https://metacpan.org/pod/RT::Extension::ActivityReports::Billing — > error, not found This extension was last updated in 3.8, which is why it never got to CPAN. I've removed it from the list. > https://metacpan.org/pod/RT::Extension::AddAdminCcsOnQueueChange — no > installation instructions Pushed an updated version with our canonical installation instructions, and version compatibility notes. > https://metacpan.org/pod/RT::Extension::AttributeWalker — no > installation instructions Adds a command-line tool, which is probably not useful for most users; I've removed it from the list. > https://metacpan.org/pod/RT::Authen::Bitcard — no installation > instructions Written for rt.perl.org and rt.cpan.org, but unlikely to be useful to anyone else; I've removed it from the list. > https://metacpan.org/pod/RT::Authen::ExternalAuth#INSTALLATION — does > not link to installation as you suggested above — forgets to mention > that you need "-I /opt/rt4/lib” so fails on my fresh 4.2.9 > installation As above. > Do I really need to keep going? Did you have feedback on the generalized installation instructions that I posted earlier in this thread? https://github.com/bestpractical/rt/blob/4.2/installing-extensions/docs/extensions.pod > In short, yes a Perl hacker can figure this out. Is your target > audience ONLY perl hackers? This is the key point I’m trying to get > through. If you only want to sell RT and its services to Perl > hackers, then feel free to ignore my advice. I don't disagree that plugin installation could be made better, and it's an area we'd like to improve on. Where you've made actionable suggestions, I believe we've responded to the best of our ability. The larger-scale changes necessary to make plugins be one-click installs cannot, obviously, appear overnight. RT is open-source; if you support a number of RT installations and have a vested interest in making plugin installation easier for your clients, patches in this area would certainly be accepted. - Alex