Re: Bug#8106: `undocumented' manpage
On Tue, 18 Mar 1997, Christian Schwarz wrote:
> On Mon, 17 Mar 1997, Nicolás Lichtmaier wrote:
>
> > On 18 Mar 1997, Chris Walker wrote:
> >
> > > Back in the mists of time, I recall a discussion of this, and I
> > > thought that the decision was to used undocumented.7. IIRC, the
> > > reasoning behind this was that the compressed version would need to be
> > > decompressed and cached for each page, thus taking time and a small
> > > amount of disk space. Have I got this wrong?
> >
> > I've tested that. man only creates a cat7/undocumented.7.gz.
So it does. I'm now happy that undocumented can be gzipped.
> >
> > > This does appear to have changed recently though as my (stable) system
> > > has /usr/man/man7/undocumented.7 and not /usr/man/man7/undocumented.7.gz
> > >
> > > You are however correct in asserting that policy states to make a link
> > > to undocumented.7.gz. Can you tell me why it was decided to switch (or
> > > even better point me at the discussion).
> >
> > I took the manpages package and read the policy. And I did what the
> > policy expects...
>
> This must have been changed before I took over the policy. Is there
> someone out there that knows the reasons for this change?
>
> As Chris Walker said, it's faster and saves more disk space if we use
> "undocumented".
Nicolas has got it right, and I'm wrong - man copes with this case and
won't use lots of disk space. It will be slower of course due to
decompressing unless it is in the cache.
>
> IMHO it would be ok to make this an exception in the policy manual.
Not necessary - see above.
>
>
> Any comments?
I originally raised this point, because the situation is different
from Debian 1.2, and my hazy memory of a discussion of the issue.
I think that it is important that the final system doesn't have lots of
broken symlinks. While bug reports should be filed for those packages not
complying with policy, I think the system should ship with a fix for those
packages that comply with the old system as I think you are planning.
Chris
PS e-mail me a copy of any replies, as the system I get the lists from is
down at the moment.
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