Re: Bug#39463,#39482,#39493: timidity, cdrdao, cdtool has no manpage for something
> On Mon, 14 Jun 1999, Roland Rosenfeld wrote:
>
> > | 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
> > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
> I think this is a stupid policy and should be changed.
I sort of agree. I found that some of the programs in my fvwm*
packages were undocumented, and I had not yet had time to do so. So I
just put in the undocumented(7) symlinks so that someone doing a man
on the appropriate programs would find out that they were undocumented
and that the maintainer knew about this. I *know* that these manpages
need writing; I don't need a bug report to tell me. But what happens
when such a package is passed on to a new maintainer? They may not
notice.
A possible solution, besides littering the BTS with essentially
identical bug reports ("such-and-such a program has no manpage") would
be to have lintian issue warnings both for missing manpages (as at
present), and also for manpages linked to undocumented.7.gz, so that
lintian will remind the developer that the manpage needs writing. In
this way, lintian will save the BTS from these standard bug reports.
Of course, undocumented(7) would need some slight rewording to match.
Thoughts?
Julian
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Julian Gilbey, Dept of Maths, QMW, Univ. of London. J.D.Gilbey@qmw.ac.uk
Debian GNU/Linux Developer, see http://www.debian.org/~jdg
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