Re: Bug#39830: [PROPOSED]: get rid of undocumented(7) symlinks
On Wed, 23 Jun 1999, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> Christoph> Bug information belongs in the bug tracking system. If
> Christoph> someone can manually set up a link then it would not be
> Christoph> much of an additional effort to put up a manpage with
> Christoph> some useful information.
> If it is so easy, why don't you contribute all the missing
> man pages?
It's quite easy to maintain a Debian package, so why do we need 400
Debian developers, the job could be done by only one person.
That's the same argument as yours above.
It is quite easy to wrote a man page, but this doesn't mean that it
easy to write more than a hundred man pages. If in contrast to this,
every maintainer writes some man pages, this is job is quickly done.
BTW: The maintainer of a package normally knows his package, so it's
easy for him to find other documentation (for cut&paste) and he should
know what the binaries do and which options are allowed,...
> The current policy merely acknowledges that writing man pages may
> not necesarily be a no brainer, and may require time, and/or
> knowledge that the maintainer does not currently have.
What knowledge do you need to write a man page? You need to know what
the binary does, this shouldn't be too complex, if you really maintain
the package (maybe there is other documentation available which you
can read to find out, what the program does). And you should know the
technique who to write a man page. This sounds to be complex, but have
a look at the Man-Page-mini-HOWTO and/or man(7) and you will see, that
writing man pages is quite easy (you can learn this in an hour).
Okay, sometimes it takes some time to maintain a package and write a
man page, but isn't this our job as package maintainers?
Ciao
Roland
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