[petsc-dev] confusing download instructions

[Barry Smith]

On Jun 28, 2013, at 8:59 AM, Jed Brown <jedbrown at mcs.anl.gov> wrote:

> Barry Smith <bsmith at mcs.anl.gov> writes:
> 
>>     And how about generating a maint tarball each night? Then users
>>     can get PETSc 3.4 with all current fixes directly without needing
>>     git?
> 
> I don't believe that updating to a new petsc-3.4.x.tar.gz is anywhere
> near as friendly as 'git pull && make'.
> 
>>      Philosphically it seems silly that we are putting fixes into
>>      maint on a random regular basis but end users don't benefit
>>      until someone manually creates a new petsc-3.4.*.tar.gz every
>>      couple of weeks. Why doesn't each new fix to maint lead to an
>>      automatic new petsc-3.4.*++ tar ball ready for people to use (or
>>      at least each night generate a new one). Now people are
>>      installing known buggy code for a bunch of days for no good
>>      reason.
> 
> This is why I often recommend that people track 'maint'.  Rolling a new
> petsc-3.4.x on each commit is needlessly noisy because users will
> constantly be nagged that a newer version is available.  I prefer the
> model where we make maintenance releases every month or so, such that
> these tend to have sufficient value to justify installing.  I have no
> objections to a nightly snapshot of 'maint', but I don't think we should
> call them 3.4.x.

   Ok then. If that is preferred model we should list it as preferred model.  Rather than saying 

PETSc Release Version 3.4

	• petsc-3.4.1.tar.gz - full distribution (including all current patches) with documentation
	• petsc-lite-3.4.1.tar.gz - smaller version with no documentation (all documentation may be accessed on line)
	• The latest stable version can also be downloaded using Git with the following command:
git clone -b maint https://bitbucket.org/petsc/petsc petsc

    We should say

PETSc Release Version 3.4

	• Prefered method: git clone -b maint https://bitbucket.org/petsc/petsc petsc (updates may be obtained via git pull && make)
	• petsc-3.4.1.tar.gz - full distribution (including most current patches) with documentation
	• petsc-lite-3.4.1.tar.gz - smaller version with no documentation (all documentation may be accessed on line)
	
That is, by default we want people to get PETSc releases via git. 

One big issues is documentation? Is it possible to build on all systems and how long does it take? Sometimes hours! So people who use git don't get documentation unless they do an extra command, is that ok? Could we have the docs in another tar ball that the user just brings  in "on top of" the git repository (maybe even a make command to get the tar ball and untar in the right place?)

   Barry