Re: Deleting uncompressed Info/Doc files at upgrades

[Jules Bean <jmlb2@hermes.cam.ac.uk>]

On 21 Oct 1998, Rob Browning wrote:

> I would suggest that a cleaner solution than the ones presented that
> would make most people happy would be the (discussed in the past)
> config file options to dpkg like:
> 
>   (set-dpkg-doc-policy! 'no-docs)
> or
>   (set-dpkg-doc-policy! 'compressed)  ;; The default
> or
>   (set-dpkg-doc-policy! 'uncompressed)
> 

I missed the previous discussion (perhaps it predated my Debian days..)
but I would say that this is clearly the optimal solution!

In fact, we could allow the user to specify any number of 'magic
directories'.  And within these magic directories, choose between the
above 3 options.  Directories where users might find this useful are
/usr/doc, /usr/info, /usr/man.

This means that on a really minimal machine, I can cause dpkg to junk all
doc/info/man pages.  [Note - we probably need an exception for
/usr/doc/*/copyright].  On a machine where I need these, but am short on
space, I set the option to compress.  And so on..

Jules

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