Re: Requirement for a “proper manpage” for every command
On Mon, Mar 02 2009, Adeodato Simó wrote:
> Many times the problem is that upstreams do provide such adequate
> documentation... in other formats than man pages. What should the
> packager do in that case? Create a dummy man page pointing out to eg.
> /usr/share/doc/foopkg/html/fooprog.html? Copy over the contents of
> fooprog.html to fooprog.1? Other?
What I have done in the past is to create a good, current man
page with the contents of the upstream provided manual, and add in a
caveat that the primary documentation lies elsewhere, and ask users to
refer to it for completeness. I submitted the man page upstream (and
have had some upstreams reject it).
Then, every few revisions, I would resync the man page. I
consider this just one of the things that Debian maintainedrs
ought to do -- I mean, we are not just glorified packagers.
manoj
--
Parkinson's Fifth Law: If there is a way to delay in important decision,
the good bureaucracy, public or private, will find it.
Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org> <http://www.debian.org/~srivasta/>
1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C
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