Re: Bug#39463,#39482,#39493: timidity, cdrdao, cdtool has no manpage for something
On Tue, 15 Jun 1999, Martin Mitchell wrote:
I filed a lot of maintonly bug reports against packages, where some
man pages are missing, while no bug report about this exists but
symlinks to undocumented.7.gz are installed.
> > /usr/man/man1/wav2pat.1.gz tells me, that I should not report the
> > missing manpage as a bug, because this "has already been reported as a
> > bug". I don't see this bug report in
> > http://www.debian.org/Bugs/db/pa/ltimidity.html, so I report it
> > myself.
> > Please don't link missing manpages to undocumented.7.gz, if there
> > isn't already a bug report, because Debian policy says:
> Congratulations, you just made the bug reports that validate the
> Debian policy.
Thanks, that was my intention.
> No, I disagree with your interpretation of policy, which is why I am
> closing the bugs. Many other packages make such symbolic links to
> avoid lintian errors which is also quite valid in my opinion.
It's okay to create these links, but it's not okay, that there are no
bug reports against this.
> Furthermore, you appear to have acted unilaterally in your mass
> bug-report postings, with discussion or consultation on
> debian-policy or debian-devel.
I thought, that the policy is quite clear in that point, that's why I
did not ask someone before doing this job.
Where don't you see the unclear points in the policy? Please let me
quote:
| 6.1. Manual pages
| -----------------
|
| You must install manual pages in `nroff' source form, in appropriate
| places under `/usr/man'. You should only use sections 1 to 9 (see the
| FSSTND for more details). You must _not_ install a preformatted `cat
| page'.
|
| 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
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
That's what I did.
| from the requested manual page to the undocumented(7) manual page
| should be provided. This symbolic link can be created from
| `debian/rules' like this:
|
| ln -s ../man7/undocumented.7.gz \
| debian/tmp/usr/man/man[1-9]/the_requested_manpage.[1-9].gz
|
| This manpage claims that the lack of a manpage has been reported as a
| bug, so you may only do this if it really has (you can report it
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
This sentence says clearly, that a bug report should exist, if
undocumented.7.gz is used.
| yourself, if you like). Do not close the bug report until a proper
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
| manpage is available.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
So it wasn't correct, that you closed my bug reports.
| You may forward a complaint about a missing manpage to the upstream
| authors, and mark the bug as forwarded in the Debian bug tracking
| system. Even though the GNU Project do not in general consider the
| lack of a manpage to be a bug, we do--if they tell you that they don't
| consider it a bug you should leave the bug in our bug tracking system
| open anyway.
> These bugs shall be closed if reopened, unless a clarification of
> policy is sought in the appropriate fora.
The policy is quite clear for me, but as long as you see this in a
different way, we may discuss this in debian-policy (I sent a Cc there).
Ciao
Roland
--
* roland@spinnaker.de * http://www.spinnaker.de/ *
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