Re: Git documentation is full of twisty passages

From: Jonathan Wakely (jwakely.boost_at_[hidden])
Date: 2020-04-17 13:55:55

On Fri, 17 Apr 2020 at 14:53, Jonathan Wakely <jwakely.boost_at_[hidden]> wrote:
>
> I've once again got lost trying to find how to check out Boost from Git.
>
> I started at boost.org and (after some missteps) went to
> https://www.boost.org/users/download/#repository which tells me
>
> "Details of the git repositories are on the Boost wiki."
> https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/wiki/ModularBoost
>
> That takes me to a page with about 20 links. Eventually I decided that
> the 13th one is the one I want:
> Getting Started with Modular Boost
> https://svn.boost.org/trac10/wiki/TryModBoost
>
> That takes me to a page that says:
> "This page is superseded by
> https://github.com/boostorg/boost/wiki/Getting-Started Please help
> migrate the rest of the old wiki !"
>
> But when I go to that page it says:
> "The Boost Wiki is at: https://github.com/boostorg/wiki/wiki"
>
> So I go there instead, which has nothing about Git.
>
> The "Getting Started" page has a link to "Getting Started with Modular
> Boost Library Development using Git" right at the very bottom, and the
> "Getting Started - Using Git" link in the sidebar takes me to a
> different page with very generic Git info (not specific to Boost), and
> again, near the bottom, is the "Getting Started with Modular Boost
> Library Development using Git" link. So I click that and ...
>
> I'm back in Trac, at https://svn.boost.org/trac10/wiki/StartModWorkflow
> I don't care bout Boost's use of Git Flow. I don't care about your
> branching policy, I want to check out the repo!
>
> It turns out that on the front page of
> https://github.com/boostorg/wiki/wiki I should have clicked the "Cheat
> Sheet" link in the sidebar:
> https://github.com/boostorg/wiki/wiki/Getting-Started%3A-Cheat-Sheet
>
> Could you please make that easier to find from boost.org?
>
> It seems to me that https://www.boost.org/users/download/#repository
> should just link straight to that cheat sheet, or to another page with
> the correct git submodule commands for checking out the repo.

Also, several links from the
https://svn.boost.org/trac10/wiki/ModularBoost page should be fixed to
go to the right place in the new github wiki, instead of to a page
that says "this has moved to X" and then when you got to X it says
"the wiki is at Y", and just links to the front page of Y (not the
page you were actually trying to find).