[OSM-dev] helping #switch2osm

[SomeoneElse]

On 16/01/2012 19:16, Roger Weeks wrote:
> Mapnik not being in git is just one of the many issues with this doc. 
> For example, mapnik, if you get the current build from git, won't 
> compile under Ubuntu 10.04. You've got to go back and get an earlier 
> 2.0 version or add a PPA and get packages that other people have created.
>
If I was following some documentation that says to use a particular 
version of something (say, Mapnik 0.7.1) I wouldn't expect to be able to 
use some random newer version and expect to still be able to follow the 
instructions.  If the documentation was updated to say "and here's where 
you get the version of Mapnik that these instructions were written for", 
and that was somewhere that wasn't at the mercy of a third-party project 
changing version control systems, then we'd be in the best of all 
possible worlds.

A related issue is "mod_tile" - that's been changed (for valid reasons, 
I'm sure) within the last couple of days so that the "make" in the 
documention no longer works.  Here again there doesn't seem to be a 
"stable" version - the solution might be as simple as passing a date to 
svn to get a "known good" version, but someone unfamilar with OSM 
development wouldn't have a clue what date to pick.

> ... and a pre-configured VM would all be ideal ways to prevent this 
> sort of thing from happening.
>

which would work, except that given the hardware needed to serve a map, 
a VM is probably not ideal for most people.  It also doesn't explain how 
to get OSM running on a server that's already installed doing something 
else.  There are off-the-shelf black-box solutions out there already, 
but they don't explain the integration process any - which is exactly 
what 
http://en.flossmanuals.net/openstreetmap/setting-up-your-own-tile-server/ and 
before it http://weait.com/content/build-your-own-openstreetmap-server 
do extremely well.

Cheers,
Andy