Client Documentation

[Network Administration]

   Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2000 01:08:21 +0200
   From: Martin Mares <mj at ucw.cz>
   Cc: bird-users at atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz
   Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

   Hello!

   > Where might I find some information about the bird client?

      The bird client is fully documented in the user's guide (doc/bird.html).

   > Scanning the client source code didn't really help and:
   > 
   >   configure: error: The client requires GNU readline library 2.1 or
   >     newer. Either install the library or use --disable-client to compile
   >     without the client.
   > 
   > makes it difficult to read the on-line docs.

      The only piece of documentation client prints and nobody else does
   is the context-sensitive help on CLI commands. If you want to use the
   client, just install the required version of the readline library.
   If you don't want, you don't need the online help, everything else
   is in the user's guide.


I suspect that I need to be more blunt.  Certainly I can start down
the trail of potentially cascading upgrades to bring this particular
OS upto readline lib 2.1 compatibility.  I wanted to know WHY I should
do that.  My point all along has been that you have zero documentation
on the client and what it brings, other than a statement that the
client allows extensive communication with the daemon.

Simply add something like:


/usr/sbin }birdc
BIRD 1.0.0 ready.
bird> ?
configure ["<file>"]                           Reload configuration
debug ...                                      Control protocol debugging
disable <protocol> | "<pattern>" | all         Disable protocol
down                                           Shut the daemon down
dump ...                                       Dump debugging information
echo [all | off | <mask>] [<buffer-size>]      Configure echoing of log messages
enable <protocol> | "<pattern>" | all          Enable protocol
exit                                           Exit the client
help                                           Description of the help system
quit                                           Quit the client
restart <protocol> | "<pattern>" | all         Restart protocol
show ...                                       Show status information


in text/html.  Including some additional detail would be nice.