Bug#253011: lintian: warning about manpage section is spurious
Package: lintian
Version: 1.23.0
Severity: normal
This warning is erroneous and should be removed from lintian's checks:
W: apt-spy: no-manpage-in-correct-directory usr/bin/apt-spy (8)
N:
N: Manpages for executables in /sbin and /usr/sbin should be placed in
N: section 8; manpages for executables in /bin and /usr/bin in section 1;
N: manpages for executables in /usr/games in section 6. For the noted
N: executable some probable manpages were found but none in the right
N: section.
N:
N: This could either mean there is no manpage for the executable or that
N: its manpage is placed in the wrong section.
What it's complaining about in this instance is the binary /usr/bin/apt-spy
not "matching" the manpage /usr/share/man/man8/apt-spy.8.gz
Where is it mandated that things with a manpage in section 8 should be in an
sbin directory? The FHS (section 4.7.2) is clear on this point:
o man8: System administration Programs used by system administrators for
system operation and maintenance are documented here. Some of these
programs are also occasionally useful for normal users.
If they are useful for normal users, then they belong in /bin, or /usr/bin.
dpkg, apt-get, aptitude and dselect for example are all in /usr/bin (for
similar reason).
Nowhere in FHS (that I can find) is it mentioned that manpages in man8
should have binaries in sbin. Nor can I find any mention of it in policy.
I don't believe that you can in any meaningful way decide whether a binary
belongs in /usr/bin or /usr/sbin simply by looking at the section the
manpage is in.
This test makes no sense to me.
Cheers,
Stephen
-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
APT prefers unstable
APT policy: (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.6-1-k7
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C (ignored: LC_ALL set to C)
Versions of packages lintian depends on:
ii binutils 2.14.90.0.7-8 The GNU assembler, linker and bina
ii diffstat 1.34-1 produces graph of changes introduc
ii file 4.07-2 Determines file type using "magic"
ii man-db 2.4.2-16 The on-line manual pager
ii perl 5.8.4-2 Larry Wall's Practical Extraction
-- no debconf information
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