I understand your concerns, but.... "Last year I converted the entire Language Manual to xdocs, but the project died from lack of community interest." I believe I converted a majority of the wiki before you did https://github.com/mislam77/hive-li/blob/master/docs/xdocs/language_manual/cli.xml, but that is splitting hairs :)
"That said, I want to ask: is this the best use of the development community's time? Some of your complaints about the wikidocs are just glitches in the non-display versions, and presumably those can be fixed or worked around" I have made several complains over the past few weeks about the display versions not looking right, and no one seems to be fixing them. The fact that the links are broken and have been for some time shows a complete lack of care from all parties.They should have never been broken in the first place, if you are making an edit and your not careful enough to test the page after, that is a bad job, (no offence but sorry). If no one is watching the edits (I am not) we are not doing a good job either. "Also, the xdocs weren't removed deliberately -- they broke in December ( HIVE-3896 <https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/HIVE-3896>) and no one had the time or inclination to fix them. Has that situation changed? " So the xdocs are broke, the wiki is broke, notice a disturbing trend here? :) Think about what new users thing when they find out language manual. If I was a new user and I looked at the wiki, I would just assume that hive was done by a bunch of cowboy coders, and I probably would not even bother using it because if someone's main documentation has that many broken links the software is probably just as bad. When we originally did the xdoc thing, no one gave a very solid reason as to why even though reviewing and submitting a patch which usually takes 2 weeks of man hours, and unit tests that take 15 hours to run, that spending 20 minutes writing xdocs was a "great burden". I think the situation is very different now, as I mentioned we have about 100% turnover in active comitters, Of the active committers hive/hcatalog there is myself and Alan Gates (think pig book, hive book) we can easily vote you on as a committer because you have shown a dedication to help with the documentation situations (committers do not have to be coders). The argument that killed the xdocs before was "wiki is the status quo". That argument has clearly fallen apart. We need a better system then 'optimistically hoping that someone maintains the wiki'. On Mon, Sep 2, 2013 at 5:06 AM, Lefty Leverenz <leftylever...@gmail.com>wrote: > Last year I converted the entire Language Manual to xdocs, but the project > died from lack of community interest. So if this goes forward, please > don't start from scratch again -- my files would need to be updated, but > wiki page history makes that fairly easy. Of course there are several new > docs which would have to be converted from wiki markup to xdocs. > > That said, I want to ask: is this the best use of the development > community's time? Some of your complaints about the wikidocs are just > glitches in the non-display versions, and presumably those can be fixed or > worked around. Adding and improving the content seems crucial, but why not > do that in the wiki? > > Also, the xdocs weren't removed deliberately -- they broke in December ( > HIVE-3896 <https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/HIVE-3896>) and no one > had the time or inclination to fix them. Has that situation changed? > > -- Lefty Leverenz, devil's advocate > > > > On Sun, Sep 1, 2013 at 5:47 PM, Edward Capriolo <edlinuxg...@gmail.com>wrote: > >> I am not sure about BNF. Hive uses antlr so the language itself is never >> described as BNF. Maybe antlr has a tool or clever way to turn the .g file >> into BNF. If it is possible that should be something we do during a >> document generating step. Also if a new feature does change the language >> the theory would be the feature would not be committed unless it had >> associated documentation. >> >> >> >> On Sun, Sep 1, 2013 at 5:44 PM, Stephen Boesch <java...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >>> Will this allow BNF's for the DDL / DML to be provided and made up to >>> date more readily ? >>> >>> >>> 2013/9/1 Edward Capriolo <edlinuxg...@gmail.com> >>> >>>> Over the past few weeks I have taken several looks over documents in >>>> our wiki. >>>> The page that strikes me as alarmingly poor is the: >>>> https://cwiki.apache.org/Hive/languagemanual.html >>>> >>>> This page has several critical broken links such as >>>> https://cwiki.apache.org/Hive/languagemanual-groupby.html >>>> https://cwiki.apache.org/Hive/languagemanual-transform.html >>>> >>>> The language manual used to be in decent shape. At times it had >>>> omissions or was not clear about what version something appeared it, but it >>>> was very usable. >>>> >>>> A long time ago I had began and completed moving the wiki documentation >>>> inside the project as xdoc. After completion, several had a problem with >>>> the xdocs approach. The main complaint was the xdoc approach was too >>>> cumbersome. (However we have basically had a 'turn over' and since that >>>> time I am one of the few active committers) >>>> >>>> The language manual is in very poor shape at the moment with broken >>>> links, incorrect content, incomplete content, and poor coverage of the >>>> actual languages. IMHO the attempts to crowd-source this documentation has >>>> failed. Having a good concise language manual is critical to the success >>>> and adoption of hive. >>>> >>>> I do not believe all of our documentation needs to be in xdoc (as in >>>> every udf, or every input format) but I believe the language manual surely >>>> does. >>>> >>>> Please review the current wiki and discuss the concept of moving the >>>> language manual to source control, or suggest other options. >>>> >>>> Thank you, >>>> Edward >>>> >>>> >>>> >>> >> > >
