Re: What are these .dhelp files?
On Wed 11 Aug 1999, Adam Di Carlo wrote:
> Paul Slootman <paul@debian.org> writes:
>
> > What are these .dhelp files that are in a number of the /usr/doc/*
> > and /usr/share/doc/ directories?
>
> Generated automatically by 'install-docs' from doc-base, or else
> included in the pacakge itself.
>
> > However, /usr/doc/doc-base seems to be mostly empty, it just has two
> > .dhelp files. dpkg doesn't know about them, so presumably they got left
> > behind at some stage which is why the directory wasn't removed?
>
>
> > $ locate /.dhelp | wc -l
> > 28
> >
> > $ dpkg -S .dhelp | wc -l
> > 7
> >
> > So there are 21 .dhelp files on my system that shouldn't be, right?
>
> Um, define "should". :)
Hmm, are packages allowed to create "random" files under /usr ?
I.e. files that aren't registered with dpkg?
> > Won't this cause a pain in the butt when trying to get rid of /usr/doc ?
>
> No, because when you remove a package, the maintainer script should
> run 'install-docs -r <docic>' which will remove the .dhelp files.
>
> I just tested it and it works fine....
Ah, but when we're moving from /usr/doc to /usr/share/doc, the package
isn't being removed, is it? It's being upgraded. This means that the
.dhelp file in the old location gets left behind, and dpkg finds a
non-empty directory in /usr/doc/ and leaves it behind... At least,
that's what I've seen happening.
Paul Slootman
--
home: paul@wurtel.demon.nl http://www.wurtel.demon.nl/
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