  Five simple guidelines are proposed to compute the generating function for
the nonnegative integer solutions of a system of linear inequalities. In
contrast to other approaches, the emphasis is on deriving recurrences. We show
how to use the guidelines strategically to solve some nontrivial enumeration
problems in the theory of partitions and compositions. This includes a
strikingly different approach to lecture hall-type theorems, with new
$q$-series identities arising in the process. For completeness, we prove that
the guidelines suffice to find the generating function for any system of
homogeneous linear inequalities with integer coefficients. The guidelines can
be viewed as a simplification of MacMahon's partition analysis with ideas from
matrix techiniques, Elliott reduction, and ``adding a slice''.
