On Thu, Oct 28, 1999 at 04:26:50PM +0200, Roland Rosenfeld wrote: > severity 39830 normal > retitle 39830 [AMENDMENT 28/10/1999] get rid of undocumented(7) symlinks > thanks > > I proposed to change the "Manual pages" section of our policy to get > rid of the undocumented(7) symlinks. > > This proposal was seconded by Chris Waters <xtifr@dsp.net> and Chris > Lawrence <quango@watervalley.net>, so I change the status to > "amendment" now. > > Here's a new version of my proposal, where I merged in the ideas which > were introduced in the discussion: > > -------------------------- schnipp ----------------------------------- > --- policy-3.0.1.1.sgml Wed Oct 27 13:52:33 1999 > +++ policy.sgml Thu Oct 28 16:13:29 1999 > @@ -3025,21 +3025,21 @@ > page'.</p> > > <p> > - 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 <manref name="undocumented" section="7"> manual page > - should be provided. This symbolic link can be created from > - <tt>debian/rules</tt> like this: > - <example> > - ln -s ../man7/undocumented.7.gz \ > - debian/tmp/usr/share/man/man[1-9]/the_requested_manpage.[1-9].gz > - </example> > - 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 yourself, if you like). Do not close the > - bug report until a proper manpage is available.</p> > - > + There must be a manual page at least for every program. If > + no manual page is available, this is considered as a bug and > + should be reported to the bug tracking system (the > + maintainer of the package is allowed to do write this bug I would suspect that this is a typo: ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > > + report himself, too). Do not close the bug report until a > + proper manpage is available<footnote>It is not very hard to > + write a man page, see the <url > + id="http://www.schweikhardt.net/man_page_howto.html"; > + name="Man-Page-HOWTO">, <tt>man(7)</tt>, or the examples > + created by <tt>debmake</tt> or <tt>dh_make</tt></footnote>. > + To avoid duplicate bug reports about missing manual pages, > + you should inform the user, that you know about the missing > + manual page in > + <tt>/usr/share/doc/<var>package</var>/TODO.Debian</tt>.</p> > + > <p> > You may forward a complaint about a missing manpage to the > upstream authors, and mark the bug as forwarded in the > -------------------------- schnipp ----------------------------------- > > Background: > =========== > Christoph Lameter <christoph@lameter.com> described the problem of the > undocumented(7) symlinks in debian-policy: > > > The symlink causes a stupid manpage to show up saying that there is no > > manpage. I would prefer if man would simply say there is no manpage. > > > > The fact that there is already a bug filed is evident from the BTS. Why > > put a symlink to undocumented into the package? > > > > Sometimes I check for documentation by doing a dpkg -L. I see a manpage > > for a certain command and do a "man xxx". Result is a "undocumented" > > manpage. Very irritating. It would have saved some effort if there simply > > were no manpage. > > Ciao > > Roland > > -- > * roland@spinnaker.de * http://www.spinnaker.de/ * > > > -- > To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-policy-request@lists.debian.org > with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org > -- Please cc all mailing list replies to me, also. ========================================================================= * http://benham.net/index.html <gecko@benham.net> <>< * * -------------------- * -----------------------------------------------* * Debian Developer, Debian Project Secretary, Debian Webmaster * * <gecko@debian.org> <secretary@debian.org> <lintian-maint@debian.org> * * <webmaster@debian.org> <gecko@fortunet.com> <webmaster@spi-inc.org> * =========================================================================
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