What to do with using_samba?

[Andrew Bartlett]

On Mon, 2013-05-27 at 08:46 -0400, Scott Lovenberg wrote:
> On May 27, 2013, at 5:06 AM, Andrew Bartlett <abartlet at samba.org> wrote:
> 
> > Back in 2008, Using Samba (3rd ed) was added.
> > 
> > commit e1cf19b2d88aa5555e63087111820e09b899508f
> > Author: Gerald (Jerry) Carter <jerry at samba.org>
> > Date:   Tue May 27 12:02:27 2008 -0500
> > 
> >    Adding initial copy of "Using Samba (3rd ed)"
> >    (This used to be commit b77c46a36366d25dcdbc476963fbf43aaa4b9801)
> > 
> > Kai reminds me that the only modification of this document since then
> > has been to remove paragraphs that reference removed parameters, and we
> > both wonder if there is any real value being the repository of this
> > document.
> > 
> > The same could be said for the Howto Collection and By Example books,
> > but we don't even publish the 3rd edition to our website!  (The website
> > has only the second edition). 
> > 
> > Any thoughts?  Is there somewhere else hosting and maintaining this in
> > parallel?
> > 
> 
> That document is so far out of date that it should probably be
> dropped.  It's barely more modern than the "speed" section of the
> HOWTO that you recently removed.  
> 
> In my mind, the Wiki has supplanted the books and is much easier to
> keep up to date as a "living document" (I hate that term).  Granted, a
> wiki is harder to ship as documentation, but keeping out of date
> documentation is even worse, IMHO.
> 
> I spoke with John Tepstra about a new revision of the book a couple of
> years back. He said that there probably would not be another printed
> version any time soon. I'd preorder an updated printed version if
> someone was to take up the work on updating the current version. 

To be clear, there are 3 books:  Using Samba, Samba By Example, and the
Samba HOWTO and Reference Guide.  However, I do see how your comments
would apply to a greater and lesser extent to all of them.

The HOWTO is the most challenging, because it drew on many old
documents, some of which were out of date before they were collected
into the book.  I've not read 'Using Samba'.  All need work, if only
because they so often refer to things that are no longer true with Samba
4.0.

The wiki is great in some ways, and I'm torn as what to do with the
'mostly accurate' books.  Are they better than what has grown in the
wiki from nothing?  Should we seed the wiki with them, or will they be
just as un-maintained there?  

We talked a bit about this before (Sept or so), and decided to keep them
for now, and I tried to remove the really out of date content. 

Andrew Bartlett

-- 
Andrew Bartlett                                http://samba.org/~abartlet/
Authentication Developer, Samba Team           http://samba.org