Documentation issues

Hello,

My company has attempted to use Dgraph several times over the last 12-months and we end up walking away from it due to a serious quality issue with the documentation.

For example, if we go to https://dgraph.io/downloads and select Linux, step one does not work due to a flag isssue: /usr/local/bin/dgraph alpha --lru_mb 1024

After some digging, it was determined the flag was changed from 20 to 21. Why is the main downloads page not updated to reflect this?

Once the flag issue was resolved, step one would still does not work because step two needs to be run first.

Step three is completely broken and this command: /usr/local/bin/dgraph-ratel is invalid. How is ratel started on Linux?

I hear allot of good things about Dgraph and I see many articles where Dgraph is bragging about its superior performance and we’d love to see how it compares to our Neo4j solutions, but the lack of accruate documenation is just such a turnoff.

Ratel isn’t available anymore. You can use http://play.dgraph.io/

That’s not docs, have you seen any broken link in the docs? I’ll check about this issue in the website.

What step two?

Hum, well, I’ll speak for myself. When I was just a user when I first read the docs. It didn’t felt so difficult to read and get things running. And back then it was very different and very specific things I’ve learned from digging the main repo. I think I have mastered the basics of Dgraph in 3 months and make it work in less than a week. I have dive into the docs for quite a long! at that time.

I think the Dgraph docs are a little different from what we find out there in other projects indeed. I think this scares some people. Today it is much more modified. People were hired just for that.

Can you list what are your main expectations in a doc?

Cheers.

Michel,

In 2021, I would expect to be able to go to the Downloads section for any reputable companies product/platform/library and find insutructions that accurately describe how to install said product/platform/library on whatever target operating system the product/platform/library claims to support.

For example, when I go to Downloads page (https://dgraph.io/downloads) for Dgraph, which I’m sure we can agree is one of the first destinations a user would go to download and try a product/platform/library - I would expect that the documenation/instructions provided to a user would be accurate.

In the case of Dgraph, the instructions on the Downloads are not accurate, they are not up-to-date and they provide broken commands that simply don’t work. They have been like this for many months.

The following is straight from your Downloads page:

Step 1. * curl -sSf https://get.dgraph.io | bash
Step 2. /usr/local/bin/dgraph alpha --lru_mb 1024
Step 3. /usr/local/bin/dgraph zero
Step 4. /usr/local/bin/dgraph-ratel

If you don’t believe me, here is a screenshot: Screenshot-from-2021-06-24-17-40-12 — ImgBB

Do you feel that my expectations are to high? Should I be OK with useless instructions that don’t provide accurate steps as to how to install Dgraph on the Linux operating system?

I can certainly find this information on the Neo4j website and it’s 100% accurate: Linux installation - Operations Manual

Forgive me if I am missing something or my expectations are to high.

Best Regards,

Dan

1 Like

I’m fixing this.

I know, what I meant about expectations was about the docs itself. The download page is another issue that is already being addressed. As you mention documentation, I was asking you in that matter. The docs itself, not the website. In general if we don’t find any good solution in the website we tend to go directly to the docs, right? I wanna know if you have found any issue there.

Michel,

Perhaps you could direct me to documenation that is up-to-date and provides accurate steps to install and get the latest version of Dgraph running on Linux that is not Docker?

Thanks,

Dan

This one https://dgraph.io/docs/deploy/download/#automatic-download