Re: /usr/man -> /usr/share/man, etc
Steve Greenland <stevegr@debian.org> writes:
> 3 problems:
>
> 1. For the packages that have already moved to /usr/share/man, they'd
> have to be re-modified to add the dependency.
Wouldn't it be possible to (at least partially) automate the addition
of a dependency or two for any package that had contents in the
recently moved areas of /usr/share?
> 2. The dependency is not real: the package's functionality does not
> depend on man-db. Suppose I'm building a firewall: I don't need the
> manpages, and I certainly don't need the man program(s).
If there are applications for which the programs are required but not
the man pages, perhaps the man pages should be in separate packages.
There's already lots of *-doc packages, as it happens.
It would then be those that depend on the appropriate version of
man-db.
An alternative approach would be for packages with man pages in
/usr/share to conflict with insufficiently recent versions of man-db.
> 3. It won't work. The actual desired dependency is on the content of a
> configuration file, which won't be updated if the user has edited
> the manpath config file.
The man-db package could, for example, check if the paths were present
in the configuration, and edit the file directly or (perhaps better)
suggest to the user any changes that were required. There's precedent
for this kind of thing, for example some packages update the passwd,
shadow and group files.
ttfn/rjk
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