Bug#39830: AMENDMENT]: get rid of undocumented(7) symlinks
severity 39830 normal
retitle 39830 [AMENDMENT 28/10/1999] get rid of undocumented(7) symlinks
thanks
I proposed to change the "Manual pages" section of our policy to get
rid of the undocumented(7) symlinks.
This proposal was seconded by Chris Waters <xtifr@dsp.net> and Chris
Lawrence <quango@watervalley.net>, so I change the status to
"amendment" now.
Here's a new version of my proposal, where I merged in the ideas which
were introduced in the discussion:
-------------------------- schnipp -----------------------------------
--- policy-3.0.1.1.sgml Wed Oct 27 13:52:33 1999
+++ policy.sgml Thu Oct 28 16:13:29 1999
@@ -3025,21 +3025,21 @@
page'.</p>
<p>
- If no manual page is available for a particular program,
- utility or function and this is reported as a bug on
- debian-bugs, a symbolic link from the requested manual page
- to the <manref name="undocumented" section="7"> manual page
- should be provided. This symbolic link can be created from
- <tt>debian/rules</tt> like this:
- <example>
- ln -s ../man7/undocumented.7.gz \
- debian/tmp/usr/share/man/man[1-9]/the_requested_manpage.[1-9].gz
- </example>
- This manpage claims that the lack of a manpage has been
- reported as a bug, so you may only do this if it really has
- (you can report it yourself, if you like). Do not close the
- bug report until a proper manpage is available.</p>
-
+ There must be a manual page at least for every program. If
+ no manual page is available, this is considered as a bug and
+ should be reported to the bug tracking system (the
+ maintainer of the package is allowed to do write this bug
+ report himself, too). Do not close the bug report until a
+ proper manpage is available<footnote>It is not very hard to
+ write a man page, see the <url
+ id="http://www.schweikhardt.net/man_page_howto.html";
+ name="Man-Page-HOWTO">, <tt>man(7)</tt>, or the examples
+ created by <tt>debmake</tt> or <tt>dh_make</tt></footnote>.
+ To avoid duplicate bug reports about missing manual pages,
+ you should inform the user, that you know about the missing
+ manual page in
+ <tt>/usr/share/doc/<var>package</var>/TODO.Debian</tt>.</p>
+
<p>
You may forward a complaint about a missing manpage to the
upstream authors, and mark the bug as forwarded in the
-------------------------- schnipp -----------------------------------
Background:
===========
Christoph Lameter <christoph@lameter.com> described the problem of the
undocumented(7) symlinks in debian-policy:
> The symlink causes a stupid manpage to show up saying that there is no
> manpage. I would prefer if man would simply say there is no manpage.
>
> The fact that there is already a bug filed is evident from the BTS. Why
> put a symlink to undocumented into the package?
>
> Sometimes I check for documentation by doing a dpkg -L. I see a manpage
> for a certain command and do a "man xxx". Result is a "undocumented"
> manpage. Very irritating. It would have saved some effort if there simply
> were no manpage.
Ciao
Roland
--
* roland@spinnaker.de * http://www.spinnaker.de/ *
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