simplifying rebaseall

[Larry Hall (Cygwin)]

On 9/17/2010 1:38 PM, Al wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I appreciate you take the time to contribute all that information.
> Hope it is not only red by me.
>
>>
>> Now, surely that is a lot of hunting around -- but I can only assume
>> that many people did so, since you are apparently the first person to
>> fail to locate the documentation when faced with the question "How do I
>> run rebaseall"?
>
> I wasn't faced with that question. I was face with error messages.
> Google guided me by this messages (and many others) to exactly this
> blog first:
>
> http://www.mylifestartingup.com/2009/04/fatal-error-unable-to-remap-to-same.html
>
> ... not to Cygwin list, not to the readme, not to the FAQ. The blog
> rather tells how to run rebaseall not much why. The comments document
> well that many people follow that advice without any knowledge of any
> readme. You don't even find the word readme on that blog.

But we have no control over that obviously.  I think it's important to
recognize when you go searching for information, it makes sense to weigh
what you find against its source and consider the project's source as a
more definitive and complete set of information.  Obviously, there's
nothing wrong with searching anywhere and everywhere for some clue about a
problem.  But information that comes from sites that are obviously not
the project's site, cygwin.com in this case, is also a clue that further
research using the project's resources and the new found data is a good
idea.

There's no question that there is quite a leap from the error message given
to the fact that rebasing is a possible solution (and not the only possible
solution - see <http://cygwin.com/acronyms/#BLODA> for another).  A FAQ
entry about the remap error message would probably help some at least.
Over time, the hope is that package rebuilding helps make this even less of
a problem.  But it is a pain regardless without a great solution.

-- 
Larry Hall                              http://www.rfk.com
RFK Partners, Inc.                      (508) 893-9779 - RFK Office
216 Dalton Rd.                          (508) 893-9889 - FAX
Holliston, MA 01746

_____________________________________________________________________

A: Yes.
> Q: Are you sure?
>> A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation.
>>> Q: Why is top posting annoying in email?

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