Lars, On Fri, Aug 29, 2008 at 09:50:23PM +0300, Lars Wirzenius wrote: > pe, 2008-08-29 kello 20:42 +0200, Michael Schutte kirjoitti: > > sendmail(8) (citadel-mta has neither of them; I’m going to open a > > serious bug after receiving some replies to this mail). > > I don't think a missing manual page is a serious bug. Of course it isn’t… > > Which section of the manual do you think sendmail belongs in? I don’t > > have a strong opinion on this; it can act as a daemon process as well as > > an ordinary program started by an MUA. I’d personally go with > > sendmail(8) to file fewer bugs (it’s the traditional choice, too). > > /usr/sbin/sendmail is, most importantly, a command line API for sending > e-mail, which user agents and other software can and do use. For this > role, I think section 1 is most appropriate, and section 8 is also fine. > > /usr/sbin/sendmail can also be a daemon that provides a mail transport > agent. For this role, section 8 seems like the only choice. > > Thus, I think the right section is dependent on how the package uses > the /usr/sbin/sendmail it provides, but if you insist on the same > section being used everywhere, then it's 8. Yup, that’s about my stream of thought as well. > I do not see it as a problem for different packages to provide the > manual page in different sections. But I may be missing something, and > if so, please elaborate. No, it isn’t much of a problem, it’s just a little inconsistency I came across recently. Working on a sendmail wrapper, I noted that setting up a diversion on /usr/share/man/man8/sendmail.8.gz and installing a replacement was not enough to hide the original sendmail’s manpage in all cases. So I have a choice between using two diversions or changing some packages. -- Michael Schutte <michi@uiae.at>
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