[pmwiki-users] Pageindex and distributed documentation (Was Strange pagelist behaviour)

[Pico]

In a thread called "Strange pagelist behavior" Marc Cooper wrote:
[snip]
>>>>> I noticed that the PmWiki FAQ is presenting different results in a new 
>>>>> (farm) wiki from the home wiki. Entries are missing from the home wiki. 
>>>>> They are using the same PmWiki files from wikilib.d. 
[snip]
> Anyway, the long and short of it is that I deleted the .pageindex file 
> in the home wiki, and missing items reappeared.
> [snip]
http://pmichaud.com/pipermail/pmwiki-users/2006-June/028960.html

That raises several questions for me that it would be helpful to get 
some feedback on.

(1) Are there situations when we should recommend that administrators 
delete their pageindex file as part of an upgrade?

Marc's situation seemed to involve an upgrade to a WikiFarm that could 
not take full advantage of revisions to the distributed documentation 
until the pre-existing pageindex file (on the field?) was deleted.

(2) Are there other situations, besides pageindex, where upgrades to 
wikifarms may involve issues that might not ordinarily be a concern when 
upgrading to a non-farm installation?

(3) Should these be dealt with through documentation, or programatically?

(4) Should distributed documentation be treated differently from all 
other (site and author generated) content, when it comes to pageindexing 
and pagelists?

Brainstorming here, we could be talking about:

(a) a separate pageindex for distributed documentation,

(b) using farm-aware code, the way we used $FarmD in our 
configuration.php files, that will look for the pageindex on the farm 
when accessing distributed documentation in the PmWiki group,


Your thoughts?

Pico