How about moving install documentation back here?

It seems that people want the install documentation here. I take for example this page that details a (non-official!) install script for Ubuntu, while the INSTALL.txt is almost an install script in itself for Debian derivatives.

It seems to me that people are not reading the stuff in the docs/ directory out there. Even worse, we have installation instructions stuck in the issue queue since forever for Gentoo and FreeBSD...

I therefore propose that we move all the documentation from the git repository into the Handbook, now that we have one that stands. (One of the reasons why we had docs in git was that the wiki on groups.drupal.org was utterly chaotic and scary.) I am not sure yet, but I think we can merge (gasp!) the HINTS files into the INSTALL.txt to provide a one-size-fits-all handbook that covers all supported platforms. The examples can be separated by platform in each page

I propose the following structure, with each item here being a page in the handbook.

• Installing Aegir - strip down to just an introduction, stop pointing to the INSTALL.txt
  • ✓ Manual install
    • ✓ System requirements - merge with top of INSTALL.txt, keep platform-agnostic
    • ✓ Configure system - this section will have examples for all supported platforms, inline - mostly empty - needs INSTALL.txt and HINTS merged in
      • ✓ Aegir user
      • ✓ DNS configuration
      • ✓ PHP configuration
      • ✓ Webserver configuration
      • ✓ Database configuration
      • ✓ Remote webserver configuration - move elsewhere? isn't this post-install?
    • ✓ Run the install script - merge in the above? or this is a very simple page that shows how to download and install drush and provision... hum.
    • ✓ Complete the installation manually - maybe merge with the above? just have one step called "installing everything" or something?
    • ✓ Checkpoint / Finished! - describes the end-state - this was all that was left in INSTALL.TXT
  • ✓ Automatic install with Debian packages - done!
    • ✓ Debian/Ubuntu install script - flushed into the attic
    • ✓ Barracuda install scripts - empty, deleted
    • ✓ Writing an install script for your platform - empty, deleted
• Upgrading Aegir - empty
  • Manual upgrade - has a lot of child pages, need to be merged up
  • ✓ Automatic upgrade with Debian package - done!
  • Automatic upgrade script - done? - this is fairly OS agnostic
  • Barracuda upgrade scripts - empty, deleted
  • Writing an upgrade script for your platform - empty, deleted

You will understand from there that I would gladly ditch the current install.sh (my long-lasting phantasm) in favor of Debian packages or scripts (like barracuda or this Ubuntu one ) that actually run as root and do everything up to hostmaster-install. Now, I don't like the idea of giving people stuff to run as root, but since others seem to be doing it and posting it in our wiki, might as well cut our losses, commit that script to provision, and maintain it. If people don't want to run stuff as root, then they follow the manual install process, which covers all cases anyways.

How does this sound? Who wants to do that magic?