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Bug#383713: gcc-4.1: man should deliver information, not error



Package: gcc-4.1
Version: 4.1.1-11
Followup-For: Bug #383713


man gcc delivers the following result:

    jrodman@Mongo:~$ man gcc
    man: warning: /usr/share/man/man1/gcc.1.gz is a dangling symlink
    No manual entry for gcc
    See 'man 7 undocumented' for help when manual pages are not available.

I understand that the documentation has been removed because it is
non-free, however, this error message suggests that man has been
misconfigured in some fashion, and is troubling and misleading.

Please consider providing man page stubs which explain that the
documentation is intentionally missing, perhaps with a link to a page
documentating the long backtstory that led to this decision, perhaps
reducing the need to re-explain the problem to new encounterers of the
problem.

Ideally, I would like to see a package in non-free which contains this
documentation, because although I understand the decision, and agree
with the principle, I need documentation for my development tools in
practice.

I am 100% behind Debian for making the principled choice of removing
non-free documentation, but perhaps two-facedly also want to get on with
my life using Linux.  A hoop-jumping exercise to locate and install
non-free documentation seems fully appropriate.  The non-availability of
such documentation seems not so much.  I hope the current situation is
temporary.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Shell:  /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.4.20-686
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C (charmap=ANSI_X3.4-1968)

Versions of packages gcc-4.1 depends on:
ii  binutils                     2.17-2      The GNU assembler, linker and bina
ii  cpp-4.1                      4.1.1-11    The GNU C preprocessor
ii  gcc-4.1-base                 4.1.1-11    The GNU Compiler Collection (base 
ii  libc6                        2.3.6.ds1-4 GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii  libgcc1                      1:4.1.1-11  GCC support library
ii  libssp0                      4.1.1-11    GCC stack smashing protection libr

Versions of packages gcc-4.1 recommends:
ii  libc6-dev                    2.3.6.ds1-4 GNU C Library: Development Librari
pn  libmudflap0-dev              <none>      (no description available)

-- no debconf information



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