[wpkg-users] WPKG documentation

[Rainer Meier]

Hi Marco,

Thanks for all the nice words ;-)

Marco Gaiarin wrote:
> Really, i've not found any real problem in WPKG setup.
> Ok, sometime i've confused execute once/always, some other i've done
> some mistakes in check condition...

You might try the XSD files I developed recently. I have to admit that 
they still have 'draft' status but they might help you writing valid XML 
files. In addition they contain a lot of information about every 
attribute and element. Decent XML editors might display this help 
directly by the context assistant - so you don't need to read huge 
documentation (which does not exist actually *g*).


Download the latest development version directly from
<http://wpkg.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/wpkg/wpkg/current-development/xsd/>


> But really the only hard part of WPKG are... writing recipes. And it is
> not a matter of WPKG, rather a matter of spend time around google,
> microsoft KB, ... to find every detail of every installer.
> And this is not matter of manual, but simply real life. ;)

Here you're right. Everybody can help adding more installers to 
<http://wpkg.org/Category:Silent_Installers>.

Another source is <http://unattended.sourceforge.net/>.

For german-speaking users also <http://www.windows-unattended.de/> 
maintains a database with lots of silent switches.


> Really: i've learned on windows/shell in this year of WPKG more then
> the rest of my life.

This is very good :-)


> WPKG i think is a 'perfect sysadmin tool'. Don't need docs. ;)

Well, I wouldn't call it perfect as nothing is absolutely perfect. And 
to the statements that it does not need docs I would not fully agree.

On wpkg.org there are already some documents available. However for new 
users I think one might just be overwhelmed by the pure amount of files 
and XML files. As a result people are focusing on getting to know the 
purpose of all the components instead of really setting up a share and 
just running it. I think it's simply too easy to get lost within the 
documents on wpkg.org.

My proposal: Move all the documents to a kind of "appendix" and then 
just publish something like <http://wpkg.org/WPKG_with_Samba> on a more 
prominent location. Then we can start to enhance this page and fill in 
more details and some pictures/screenshots. Some might find pictures 
useless but it sometimes scares people to read a tutorial with several 
pages. Some "demo material" like WPKG client or event log screenshots 
might catch the users attention.

The goal should be that every user can experience a very quick setup and 
first "great it works" feeling. For that we could probably also rework 
some of our sample XML files and deliver a set of default packages which 
is downloading and installing a free tool like Pidgin. So if the user 
just runs wpkg.js he will immediately see a result and will be able to 
follow up more documents to see how WPKG achieved to install the package:
- reading hosts.xml
- reading proiles.xml
- reading packages.xml
- mapping packages to a profile
- assigning the profile to a host definition


Again, I think the most important point is to allow users to install hes 
first package within 15 minutes - then I think he will continue to read 
about WPKG.


br,
Rainer