On Wed, 24 Jan 2007 16:08:14 +0100 schönfeld / in-medias-res <schoenfeld@in-medias-res.com> wrote: > >> - Your package does not include a manpage for a binary. Thats not an > >> 'error', but is highly recommended and the fact that there is none, > >> results in a lintian warning. > > > > Ahem, correct. That's for two reasons: firs crotch only understands > > two arguments, no options in only uses STDIN and STDOUT, therefore I > > thought I could omit a manpage. Second, I do not know how to write > > manpages... :o( > > About writing of man pages. It is easier then writing applications. > Just open up an existing manpage in an editor and look at it. On the > first sight it might look a little bit obscure, but it isn't. Even I am > able to write manpages (but I cannot code much C) There are plenty of tools that help create manpages without having to understand the Groff/troff format. help2man can take your STDOUT usage message and convert that to a usable manpage, doclifter can then take that manpage and create XML that is easier to edit and gives you instructions on how to use xsltproc to turn the XML back into a manpage. dh_make creates an example manpage (groff, xml and sgml formats) which you probably deleted and which you can recreate in any temporary directory. There really is no excuse for not being able to write a manpage. If you can write a ChangeLog entry, you can write a manpage. OK, it may not be the most verbose or comprehensive manpage in Debian but it is a start. Some packages don't need more than a single screen of manpage output - many packages could do with splitting their overly verbose manpages into separate files. Generating a simple manpage is trivial compared to all the other packaging tasks. When generating a manpage, ensure you package the original XML/SGML so that if there are bug reports against your manpage, people can submit patches that you can actually use. Converting a patch for a manpage into a patch for the generating XML is not trivial. You don't have to generate the manpage during the package build process, just update the manpage when the XML/SGML changes. -- Neil Williams ============= http://www.data-freedom.org/ http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/ http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/
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