On Mon, Mar 02, 2009 at 11:22:52AM +0100, Simon Josefsson wrote:
How about submitting a patch to use help2man instead? http://www.gnu.org/software/help2man/ Then the man page will be kept up to date with --help output.
help2man is a fine starting point for a manpage, but unless the help messages are very verbose, it is not sufficient. A manpage needs to explain all the possibilities and interactions between different options that are usually not provided by --help output. An excellent example is gpg(1). help2man could provide a very basic starting point, but the resulting manpage would be woefully incomplete.
Possibly the document around the man page requirement could point to help2man as a quick solution in case there is useful --help output but no man page.
My concern is that people will solely use help2man instead of providing a real manpage. Debian requires manpages for a reason: to provide adequate documentation on how to use installed programs. -- brian m. carlson / brian with sandals: Houston, Texas, US +1 713 440 7475 | http://crustytoothpaste.ath.cx/~bmc | My opinion only troff on top of XML: http://crustytoothpaste.ath.cx/~bmc/code/thwack OpenPGP: RSA v4 4096b 88AC E9B2 9196 305B A994 7552 F1BA 225C 0223 B187
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature