install-manpage (was: Re: don't gzip man files)

[shields@crosslink.net (Michael Shields)]

At 1996-04-19 06:33, Christian Hudon wrote:
> On Thu, 18 Apr 1996, Michael Shields wrote:
[...]
> > The best solution of all might be an install-manpage program, along the
> > lines of install-info.  This would allow each user to have the option of
> > compressed source, uncompressed source, compressed preformatted only,
> > compressed source with uncompressed preformatted, &c.  It would be easy to
> > tell what packages weren't using install-manpage by grepping
> > /var/lib/dpkg/info/*.list for /usr/man, so the transition wouldn't be too
> > painful.
>
> To me, that seems like an awfully complicated solution for the size of the
> problem. Seems like that kind of solution could create bigger problems
> than the one it's trying to solve.

It's cleaner than the solution of having dpkg mung the .list file after
installation, which I think sets a bad precedent.  install-manpage would be
consistent with install-info and used in much the same way.

Here is a very general, very complicated solution: To install a file, dpkg
unpacks it into .dpkg-new.  It then can invoke another program that would
compress it, preformat it, gzexe it, rm it, add it to /usr/info/dir, or
whatever the user wanted; and outputs zero or more filenames, which are the
files that actually go into the .list.

I think the latter is too powerful to use before dpkg 2.0, so unless anyone
thinks it will solve another problem, I'd rather pursue install-manpage.
I'm willing to implement it if someone can suggest how it might be
configured.

--
Shields, CrossLink.