90% automation on system documentation
Wednesday, August 27. 2008
In all the jobs I had until now,
most of the system documentation did NOT include why the machine was set up
or what one had to do to get common things done, but many people think, listing
all the hardware, serial numbers and installed software packages is sufficient.
I don't think so, but I think that these pieces of information should be included
into the documentation. But how do you do this without too much work?
You COULD collect all that information manually and type or cut&paste it into
your existing documentation.
I chose a different way: On many systems, we already collect data with the
neat cfg2html script. It collects most
vital data of many different operating systems and outputs them to a text or
html file.
I'm using the text file to create a Docbook appendix which I can include into
my documentation.
most of the system documentation did NOT include why the machine was set up
or what one had to do to get common things done, but many people think, listing
all the hardware, serial numbers and installed software packages is sufficient.
I don't think so, but I think that these pieces of information should be included
into the documentation. But how do you do this without too much work?
You COULD collect all that information manually and type or cut&paste it into
your existing documentation.
I chose a different way: On many systems, we already collect data with the
neat cfg2html script. It collects most
vital data of many different operating systems and outputs them to a text or
html file.
I'm using the text file to create a Docbook appendix which I can include into
my documentation.
Continue reading "90% automation on system documentation"
