Re: saspconvert manpage
This is concerning Bug#17908, which is a bug I filed against
debiandoc-sgml for no man page for
/usr/lib/debiandoc-sgml/bin/saspconvert. I felt that I should retract
the bug since the program is under /usr/lib.
[You (avrangel@hvssa01.nl.lucent.com)]
>I was just checking the Debian web pages and saw your bug report. I'm on a
>business trip and won't be back home until next Sunday, so I'm not within
>reach of my PC right now to look into this.
>
>I'm not sure how to interpret the policy with respect to this manual page
>missing. So, could you "ask around" to find out how to go about this?
I've seen other developers actually move scripts to /usr/lib/... in
order to avoid supplying man pages for them. This leads me to
conclude that scripts under /usr/lib/... (the script in question here
is /usr/lib/debiandoc-sgml/bin/saspconvert) do not need manual pages.
Debian Policy 2.4.0.0, Section 5.1 addresses manual pages.
Specifically:
If no manual page is available for a particular program, utility or
function and this is reported as a bug on debian-bugs, a symbolic link
from the requested manual page to the undocumented(7) manual page
should be provided.
Under strict legalistic interpretation, this statement would cover
programs under /usr/lib. However the current "de facto"
interpretation of the debian developers countermands this. Do we need
a slight wording change to the policy? Here's a try:
Any user-accessible program, utility or function must have a manual
page. User-accessible for programs and utilities means that the
program lies on the system path, including the 'sbin' directories.
If no manual page is available for such a program, utility or
function, and this is reported as a bug on debian-bugs, a symbolic
link from the requested manual page to the undocumented(7) manual
page should be provided.
There's probably a better way to restate it.
.....A. P. Harris...apharris@onShore.com...<URL:http://www.onShore.com/>
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