Re: ocaml-deb documentation packaging

[Ian Zimmerman <itz@speakeasy.org>]

Sven> Well, /usr/share is all arch independent stuff, and as such, it
Sven> can be (NFS) shared between lot of boxes ...  not sure how dpkg
Sven> & co handle this though.

Georges> Anyway, I don't think that it solves the problem of serving
Georges> documentation since this will introduce a(n additional and
Georges> reverse) dependency (mouting point) between a "user class"
Georges> machine and the server (there is more documentation on user's
Georges> machines...)

The officially promoted way of reading documentation on Debian (dwww -
there are others, but I sense they are going away) requires the
workstation to run a http daemon.  This is not necessarily a huge
overkill because the daemon doesn't have to be Apache - they are small
specialized replacement packages (do "apt-cache search 'http server'
to see the wide choice).  So I think the way to do this (and this
might be what Sven meant) is to mount /usr/share/doc via NFS from the
file server and make it available to the http daemon on each
workstation via symlinks or such.

Georges> PS3 : suppose that I want to add the bibtex2html
Georges> documentationon our file server, here is what I have to do :
Georges> :-(((((

Presumably each package for which you need to install the docs is
installed on _some_ workstation.  So you could install the package
with /usr/share/doc mounted from the file server as writable, and the
docs would automatically go to the right place.

There's still one problem - conflicts, what to do when the same
package is later installed on another workstation (either directly or
due to dependencies).  You are right, there's no perfect solution in
place for this.

-- 
Ian Zimmerman, Oakland, California, U.S.A.
EngSoc adopts market economy: cheap is wasteful, efficient is expensive.