[Tile-serving] Switch2osm rewrite review needed

[SomeoneElse]

On 10/05/2014 08:34, Paul Norman wrote:
> I've been working on rewriting the switch2osm guides to make use of
> openstreetmap-carto, the increased software in PPAs, modern versions of
> Postgres, and other improvements
>
> One guide is on loading data into osm2pgsql. I'm working on the next guide
> which is rendering from it, or using it with tilemill. At this point, I'd
> like some more eyes to review it: http://switch2osm.org/loading-osm-data/
>

First - thanks for doing this.  I've already found pre-release and 
previous versions of it useful.  I've not had a chance to follow it 
"soup to nuts", which would help to identify any bits needing further 
explanation.

A couple of thoughts though:

1) Personally I'd keep the guide just for Ubuntu 14.04, rather than have 
"if you're on 12.04 then do this instead".

2) I'd also move the "planet" part of "Loading the data" into a separate 
document linked from here, but also stressing "you really need to try 
importing a small area first" before the "Loading an extract" that 
explains the osm2pgsql command line that'll work on a 2Gb VM with a 
small extract.

3) I'd probably not say "It is possible to use PostgreSQL 8.4 and 
PostGIS 1.5, but it is strongly not recommended"- we're already telling 
people what versions to use and why, and even if people aren't following 
the guide fully and using a PPA on 14.04 they'll still get  
postgresql-9.3-postgis-2.1 and postgresql-contrib-9.3 from Ubuntu's apt 
repository.

4) "The default PostgreSQL settings" should tell people what file to 
edit ("/etc/postgresql/9.3/main/postgresql.conf") for 
"maintenance_work_mem" and "work_mem".

5) This guide is just "Loading osm data", so obviously there's no 
discussion of setting up renderd or one of the alternatives, but a bit 
more info in the "Stylesheet" section about why we're downloading the 
carto style before running osm2pgsql would help. Perhaps just "osm2pgsql 
creates database columns based on the style used, so we'll download the 
stylesheet first".

Cheers,

Andy