Problems delimiting the modules to be manified

[Gunnar Wolf <gwolf@gwolf.org>]

Hi guys,

I have a problem with PDF::API2 (pkg-perl/packages/libpdf-api2-perl/):
The automatic manification of the module's documentation. The module's
Makefile.PL has the following in it:

my %makehash=(
    NAME         =>  "PDF::API2",
    AUTHOR       =>  "areibens\@cpan.org",
    ABSTRACT     =>  "TheNextGen PDF Create/Modify API",
    dist         =>  {
        ZIP         =>  "zip ",
        ZIPFLAGS    =>  " -v -o -r -9 ",
        COMPRESS    =>  "gzip -9 -f ",
    },
    MAN1PODS     =>  {},
    MAN3PODS     =>  {},
    PREREQ_PM    =>  {
                    'Compress::Zlib'    => 1.0,
                },
    VERSION_FROM => $versionfile,
);

The important line is the MAN3PODS one: It indicates no man pages
should be generated - And effectively, if you look at today's
libpdf-api2-perl, there is nothing in /usr/share/man/. Now, if I
comment out this line, first thing I notice is that it takes forever
to build the package - But once it is built, lintian complains very
harshly about it:

W: libpdf-api2-perl: manpage-has-bad-whatis-entry usr/share/man/man3/PDF::API2::Resource::Font::CoreFont::trebuchet.3pm.gz
W: libpdf-api2-perl: manpage-has-bad-whatis-entry usr/share/man/man3/PDF::API2::Resource::Font::CoreFont::timesbold.3pm.gz
W: libpdf-api2-perl: manpage-has-bad-whatis-entry usr/share/man/man3/PDF::API2::Resource::Font::CoreFont::trebuchetbolditalic.3pm.gz
W: libpdf-api2-perl: manpage-has-bad-whatis-entry usr/share/man/man3/PDF::API2::Resource::XObject::Form::BarCode::codabar.3pm.gz
W: libpdf-api2-perl: manpage-has-bad-whatis-entry usr/share/man/man3/PDF::API2::Content::symbols.3pm.gz
(...goes on for 53 lines)

This is because those modules really lack documentation, but _do_ have
an incomplete POD -typically stating only the AUTHOR and HISTORY
sections, not the NAME one which whatis uses.

I could come up with NAME sections for them all, but they are not
providing any real documentation (in many cases, they are just fonts,
no real Perl-usable functionality is included. Now, according to the
ExtUtils::MakeMaker documentation on MAN1PODS and MAN3PODS:

       MAN3PODS
         Hashref that assigns to *.pm and *.pod files the files into
         which the manpages are to be written. MakeMaker parses all
         *.pod and *.pm files for POD directives. Files that contain
         POD will be the default keys of the MAN3PODS hashref. These
         will then be converted to man pages during "make" and will be
         installed during "make install". 

...But I have not been able to come up with a way to use this. I tried
setting the file list to 1, to the destination name, to whatever, and
I always get an error such as:

Makefile:883: *** multiple target patterns.  Stop.

Has anybody used this?

Greetings,


-- 
Gunnar Wolf - gwolf@gwolf.org - (+52-55)1451-2244 / 5554-9450
PGP key 1024D/8BB527AF 2001-10-23
Fingerprint: 0C79 D2D1 2C4E 9CE4 5973  F800 D80E F35A 8BB5 27AF