Re: Package options dialog

[Mayuresh <mayuresh%acm.org@localhost>]

On Fri, May 11, 2018 at 04:54:55PM -0500, Jason Bacon wrote:
> I'm approaching this with 18 years of experience supporting research
> computing, knowing what researchers tend to struggle with and what they can
> do well.  These are intelligent people, but most have not had attention to
> detail beaten into them to the extent that we have.  They tend to make a lot
> of mistakes with CLIs because they're used to more forgiving interfaces, so
> I aim to provide a more fool-proof interface if I'm suggesting that they do
> something for themselves.

I do not have much problem with the suggestion of "contrib" type utilities
suggested. But I do find above account on skill level of scientists a bit
surprising.

I'd humbly submit to have more than couple of decades of experience with a
research organization in various positions, various groups, including
teams largely of biologist to give one example. While the computing skill
levels vary, in whatever I have experienced, a good proportion of
researchers love command line interfaces, most use Linux on their laptops
and can follow instructions from well written documents. There will always
be at least be some colleagues around to approach to in peculiar
situations unclear to someone.

I don't insist that all research organizations / researches are the same.
But I'd be certainly surprised if at least a few individuals in every work
group can't do these things well.

> but the bootstrap process was way beyond the average scientist's skill
> level.

cd /usr/pkgsrc/bootstrap
./bootstrap

Yes, may be a couple of more options, but above would be just enough, too.

I'd be surprised if it's beyond someone's skill level.

Mayuresh