Re: Perl policy vs. the search order for .1{,p} manpages

[Colin Watson <cjwatson@debian.org>]

On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 01:51:46PM +0200, Niko Tyni wrote:
> While manpages for separately packaged modules (.3pm) are preferred
> over those bundled with the Perl core (.3perl), this is not the case
> for separately packaged scripts (.1p) vs. bundled ones (.1).
> 
> This is a real problem with libmodule-corelist-perl and perl 5.10.0:
> with both installed, 'man corelist' gives the older manual which
> doesn't document the new '-d' option. Explicitly asking for the newer
> one with eg. 'man -S 1p corelist' works fine, of course.
[...]
> I see three ways to fix this: 
> 
> - put 1p first in the man-db configuration, which seems a bit invasive
> 
> - make libmodule-corelist-perl divert /usr/share/man/man1/corelist.1.gz,
>   violating the Perl policy
> 
> - change the policy and the perl packaging to put the program manuals 
>   in eg. section 1perl, and add '1p 1perl' in the man-db configuration
> 
> Why was section 1 chosen in the Perl policy in the first place?
> Is there a reason why '1perl' wouldn't work?

I suggested this in
http://lists.debian.org/debian-perl/2001/03/msg00008.html but Brendan
wasn't keen (see the follow-up).

If Brendan wants to revisit this decision in light of this problem,
that'd be great; otherwise I'm actually quite happy to put 1p in front
of 1 in the search order. Let me know.

Diverting corelist.1.gz would definitely be wrong.

Cheers,

-- 
Colin Watson                                       [cjwatson@debian.org]