Re: man : work in progress
On Mon, Mar 15, 1999 at 07:26:02PM +0100, Josip Rodin wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 15, 1999 at 07:46:03PM +0200, Fabrizio Polacco wrote:
> > People can start installing manpages into /usr/share/man instead of
> > /usr/man .
>
> What about those manpages from /usr/X11R6/man directory?
Wrom the FHS that I have (which could not be the latest, please correct
me if I'm wrong) it seems that they stay there.
> > Don't make these packages depend on man. If you're concerned
> > about users not upgrading their configuration, grep manpath.config in
> > postinst and issue a warning, or send email.
>
> I don't think anyone should do this, especially if there's also
> a keypress required after that message.
In fact, I mentioned email to avoid those nasty press any key ...
Do you think that man-db should supply an utility to automatically
update the config file, so other packages can use it to inspect/correct
so no user will find itself out of manpages?
The utility would wait for dpkg to unlock, so it would be run only once
per installation and not per package.
It would have the benefit to avoid people to merge manually their custom
config files.
A bonus benfit would have been to recreate the man indexes only after
the installation/upgrade is done, and not during it, like it happens
now.
>
> IIRC someone (you?) said man-db supports /usr/share/man directory
> since '93. or such - so recompiling the package for convenience of
> hamm, bo, etc users isn't neccessary?
In fact, this move is simply a configuration change, which, from the
packaging prospective is a mess :-)
>
> > Need to modify lintian.
>
> What about debhelper and debmake?
Well, probably yes; I don't know for sure, as I don't use them.
It is a major change in policy, so need also to update debian-policy :-)
>
> > * absolutely DON'T SYMLINK /usr/man !! Otherways you'll get double
> > entries in the database.
>
> Here's an item for future Potato Release Notes.
Well, this wasn't a warning to users, but to developers thinking of an
"easy" way to accomplish the thing.
This is an issue also for translated manpages, where there is the
temptation to symlink directories between common locale names.
fab
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