do you ever view the "read me" files that come with software?

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me neither.

― faith popcorn (Jody Beth Rosen), Friday, 30 September 2005 00:00 (twenty years ago)

should i?

― faith popcorn (Jody Beth Rosen), Friday, 30 September 2005 00:03 (twenty years ago)

I miss the IF YOU LIKE THIS GAME, PLEASE SEND $10 TO ME C/O MY MOM'S BASEMENT, 72227 text.

― Pleasant Plains /// (Pleasant Plains ///), Friday, 30 September 2005 02:46 (twenty years ago)

i feel guilty cuz someone went to the trouble of typing it all up.

― faith popcorn (Jody Beth Rosen), Friday, 30 September 2005 03:09 (twenty years ago)

It's mostly C.Y.A. material anyway, though.

― Pleasant Plains /// (Pleasant Plains ///), Friday, 30 September 2005 03:17 (twenty years ago)

Depends on the s/w. If its a game with a new update I might do, as the readme sometimes mentions lastminute bugs and stuff.

― Trayce (trayce), Friday, 30 September 2005 03:25 (twenty years ago)

I read it if I don't know how it works and there isn't any better documentation immediately obvious.

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Friday, 30 September 2005 05:48 (twenty years ago)

I actually almost always do.

― edward o (edwardo), Friday, 30 September 2005 06:00 (twenty years ago)

This thread has inspired me to find out how many readme files I have on the computer:


$ locate -i '*/README*' | wc -l
2213

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Friday, 30 September 2005 06:02 (twenty years ago)

(of course, some packages have multiple readme files, usually for different OSes)

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Friday, 30 September 2005 06:03 (twenty years ago)

on linux yes every single time the sucker fails to compile.

― Ste (Fuzzy), Friday, 30 September 2005 07:22 (twenty years ago)

Of course, 99% of INSTALL files on Linux are useless, because they consist entirely of the boilerplate text spat out by Autoconf.

"These are generic installation instructions"

The other command that's often even more useful that reading README is:


$ ./configure --help

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Friday, 30 September 2005 07:53 (twenty years ago)

Yes, almost always, but only if they're plainn text files hidden in the install directory - always useful hacky type stuff.

― mei (mei), Friday, 30 September 2005 08:58 (twenty years ago)

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