Investigate how we generate support information and dependencies for install docs

[mthalman]

Type of issue

Other (describe below)

Description

The documentation at https://github.com/dotnet/docs/blob/master/docs/core/linux-prerequisites.md has a section on Linux distribution dependencies. The packages that are listed here don't line up with the packages that are specified in the packaging runtime deps.

UPDATE (adegeo):

This page was rewritten at some point, and the prerequisites were moved to the individual distro pages. However, this issue still persists. With https://github.com/dotnet/core/pull/9412 this information may be in a json file we can automate to generate a list of prereqs.

Page URL

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/install/linux

Content source URL

https://github.com/dotnet/docs/blob/main/docs/core/install/linux.md

Document Version Independent Id

1850602d-6b92-1449-c8bd-116e36fc0f26

Article author

@adegeo

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Associated WorkItem - 308662

[mairaw]

Thanks for your feedback @mthalman. @leecow Can you please take a look at this issue for Linux prereqs?

[leecow]

The problem is that while packagename* works when the dependency is expressed in a deb, doing the same from a bash script or directly with the package manager does not work (that I can tell anyway).

For example, attempting apt-get install libicu* will literally install every package that starts wtih "libicu".

I'm all for it if there's a way to express this in the docs to simplify things a bit.

[mthalman]

The problem is that while packagename* works when the dependency is expressed in a deb, doing the same from a bash script or directly with the package manager does not work (that I can tell anyway).

For example, attempting apt-get install libicu* will literally install every package that starts wtih "libicu".

I'm all for it if there's a way to express this in the docs to simplify things a bit.

The * wasn't meant to be the literal value used in a shell command; it was merely meant to indicate multiple versions (https://github.com/dotnet/core-setup/blob/fd3b3421d7b901aaac28ad34e63b6480f88973d3/src/pkg/packaging/deb/package.targets#L327).

[mthalman]

This issue is somewhat related to https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr/issues/26303. In an ideal world, we'd have one master list of native dependencies. Documentation could be updated programatically by reading from this master list.

[dotnet-bot]

This issue has been closed as part of the issue backlog grooming process outlined in #22351.

That automated process may have closed some issues that should be addressed. If you think this is one of them, reopen it with a comment explaining why. Tag the @dotnet/docs team for visibility.

[mthalman]

Reopening because this is still relevant. There is a larger effort to better manage the descriptions of native dependencies at https://github.com/dotnet/core/issues/5651.

[adegeo]

Revisit later in the year due to https://github.com/dotnet/core/pull/9412