wiki again

Mon Apr 26 14:07:00 GMT 2004

Jakob:
I am a user and not one of the developers. I'd like to say, though, that I love your idea.
I have been thinking a lot about the problems of documentation and the "little" things that never
get written down but we all have to figure out the hard way to get what we want out of software in
general, and gcj in particular.
I think a wiki would be great because there is no one way to write documentation and there is no
perfect manual. What there is is a lot of mindsets that benefit from seeing different sets of
things. So a wiki would let people of similar interests find each other's commentary and
questions.
In a way, this relates to the whole discussion Eric Raymond kicked off recently on interface
design. What ensued was a lot of articles on "the way" to "design an interface" for and to
"document" software.
I think there is a whole spectrum of users of any particular piece of software that ranges from
those with no interest in learning the theory of operation (who mostly want to do one or two
things), to users with a lot on interest in the theory of operation (although even at that end of
the spectrum, you have a million different directions you can go in in terms of 'theory of
operation.' Perhaps a better analogy than a spectrum is a tree with the root being those with
little interest and specific, concrete needs, and the tips of the branches being people deeply
interested in *different* things).
Anyway, I think we need a lot of example programs and makefiles and commentary to illustrate how
to do all sorts of different things with gcj.
A bash file (that actually compiles, links, and runs an illustrative test case, together with the
subject java code) is worth a thousand words.
Chris Marshall
--- Jakob Praher <jpraher@yahoo.de> wrote:
> hi all,
>> I know you're all busy hacking, so I keep this short.
>> I think a wiki or any other community supporting tool would be great. So
> I propose a wiki on sourceforge (since I could create that):
>> suggested name: gcj-resources.sf.net
>> The idea is simple:
> Many not so obvious things as well as topics like migratinng from suns
> jdk to gcj and so on could be described there.
>> But I stress that: It only works if it is acceepted by at least some of
> you. If you have strong objections to that, I rather save some time.
>> -- Jakob
> PS: I am likely to attend the GCC Summit in Ottawa, so I am looking
> forward to seeing you there.
>>>>

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