Re: New developer papercut - Makefile references INSTALL

Magnus Hagander <magnus(at)hagander(dot)net> writes:
> On Mon, Mar 7, 2022 at 11:51 PM Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
>> Doesn't really help people working from git, I think, because the
>> master branch is always going to claim to be "devel" even when you
>> rewind it to some old state. Maybe we can assume people doing
>> such a thing have even more clue ... but on the whole I'd rather
>> not add the additional complication.

> Well it could per major version couldn't it? When we start working on
> v16, we stamp master as that, and we could use that for the links. It
> will work "for the past", but if will of course not be able to track
> how the docs changes between the individual commits -- since our
> website only has the latest release for each one. If we need that it
> needs to be in the source tree -- but is that actually a requirement?

I think that adds more complication than usefulness. ISTM having the
master branch not identify itself more specifically than "devel" is
actually a good thing in this context, for precisely the reason that
the corresponding docs are likely to be in flux. Seeing "v16" seems
likely to lull people into a false sense of certainty that whatever
they find on the web matches the code they actually have.

So I'm coming to the position that the README file ought not contain
any link more specific than https://www.postgresql.org/docs/
and that it should then tell you to look at the installation chapters
in the appropriate version's docs. (Considering we have multiple
installation chapters nowadays, we couldn't provide an exact URL
anyway.)

regards, tom lane