Re: pre-proposal: get rid of undocumented(7)
On Tue, 15 Jun 1999, Chris Waters wrote:
[get rid of the symlinks to undocumented(7)]
> OTOH, changing this would affect a lot of packages.
But this shouldn't be a big problem, because removing the symlinks can
be done in some seconds. And lintian can be used to inform the
maintainers, that this has to be done. We won't be implement this
change this month, but it shouldn't be too complex to realize this in
one of the next dpkg-buildpackage cycles...
> How about this as an idea: if you have no man page, you have to put
> a file in /usr/doc/<package>/no-man-page that describes the
> situation, briefly.
I would prefer a filename like "TODO.Debian" or "TODO.man".
> Something along the lines of "I'm working on it", or "I'm not
> working on it because I don't know roff",
IMHO a very weak argument, because there is a nice mini-HOWTO about
writing man pages, which explains this using examples. Or you can
write the man page in a different format (e.g. POD) and convert it to
a man page. So every maintainer should be able to find his way to
write man pages.
> or "I'm not working on it because the program is evolving too
> rapidly for me to track", or "upstream promised one next release",
> or whatever seems appropriate. Unlike undocumented(7), this could
> actually be somewhat useful, as it would let the users know exactly
> what the situation is.
Correct. This file should especially note _all_ missing man pages in
the package.
But this file shouldn't be able to silence lintian. Maybe it could be
able to lower the level from an error to a warning in lintian...?
> The only really tricky bit I see with this idea is the transition
> from what we have currently.
Simply write it to the policy and change lintian accordingly.
Ciao
Roland
--
* roland@spinnaker.de * http://www.spinnaker.de/ *
PGP: 1024/DD08DD6D 2D E7 CC DE D5 8D 78 BE 3C A0 A4 F1 4B 09 CE AF
Reply to: