[OpenAFS] OpenAFS site not geared for beginners...

[Jeffrey Hutzelman]

On Friday, September 01, 2006 05:30:34 PM -0400 Rodney M Dyer 
<rmdyer@uncc.edu> wrote:

> Long story short...  It appears that the OpenAFS web site is geared
> mostly to developers and not end users.  It would be nice if there was
> always a guaranteed link to the most stable "production" release right on
> the front page of the web site.

The "latest release" links in the navbar and at the top-right were intended 
to serve that purpose.



> Having multiple versions of OpenAFS
> available under "OpenAFS News" can be confusing for some people.

We try to only include the most recent stable and unstable releases. 
Unfortunately, it seems that recently, people have not been removing old 
news items as they are superceded by new ones.


> Even
> more so, when the user chooses "Latest Release" under the left web pane,
> it chooses to go to the beta's and release candidates.  Shouldn't these
> be listed under "Unstable Releases"?

I'm inclined to agree that release/latest.html should never point to a beta 
or release candidate, but only to final releases on the current stable 
branch.  Ultimately, this decision is up to the gatekeepers.



> I told our help desk manager to just download the one that we feel is the
> most production and stable copy, put it on our own web site, and point
> the users to our site.  He said that he had done that in the past but the
> version he kept on his site became "out of date" because he rarely got
> around to updating it.  This has been especially problematic in the last
> couple of years since the versions have been increasing so fast.

As someone who provides AFS support to a large user community, I'm inclined 
to prefer your approach over your help desk manager's.  Telling users to 
download and install "the latest" software from an site not under your 
control means you are effectively giving up control over what you do and do 
not choose to support, and the ability to test software releases and insure 
they work correctly in your environment before you begin recommending that 
users install them.

-- Jeff