Some Wiki updates

[Chad Walters <ch...@powerset.com>]

Now that we have the Wiki up, I am planning to significantly increase the
amount of documentation for Thrift and also provide updated information for
things that are new or changed since the whitepaper.

I added initial versions of pages on Thrift types and IDL. The first has
some updated information over the whitepaper and the second is currently
just a stub that I intend to expand substantially as time permits.

I also updated the GNU autotools section on the requirements page to include
explicit automake and libtool versions, since this tripped up some folks
previously and also bumped the autoconf version to 2.60 since I believe this
newer versions is now needed.

One Apache process question: Should Wiki updates and additions like this
flow through JIRA as well? If so, can we assume that documentation changes
like this will follow a Commit Then Review model?

Chad

Re: Some Wiki updates

[Chad Walters <ch...@powerset.com>]

On 6/16/08 12:28 PM, "Doug Cutting" <cu...@apache.org> wrote:

So, to answer your question, no, Thrift wiki updates do not need to flow
through Jira.  However documentation changes that will be distributed
with releases should follow the same processes as code changes.

Makes sense. I think I'll do some of the initial work on wiki and then look to move it into more formal documentation after its been refined a little with help from the rest of the community.

Chad

Re: Some Wiki updates

[Doug Cutting <cu...@apache.org>]

Chad Walters wrote:
> One Apache process question: Should Wiki updates and additions like this
> flow through JIRA as well? If so, can we assume that documentation changes
> like this will follow a Commit Then Review model?

The wiki, since it is world-writable, is not an official Apache product, 
and is not subject to Apache processes, licensing, etc.  Documentation 
that is maintained in subversion and is bundled into releases is part of 
an Apache product and is managed by Apache processes, licensing, etc.

Many projects have both a Wiki and official documentation.  The wiki is 
an informal scratchpad for tips, tricks, etc.  Official documentation is 
frequently authored in XML that's rendered as HTML (and PDF) by tools 
like Forrest and Anakia.  It's versioned and branched with the code, so 
that one need not manually maintain different versions as one would on 
the wiki.

Some projects maintain their official documentation using the Confluence 
wiki, providing write-access only to committers, and exporting read-only 
copies for use as end-user documentation.

So, to answer your question, no, Thrift wiki updates do not need to flow 
through Jira.  However documentation changes that will be distributed 
with releases should follow the same processes as code changes.

Doug