Bug#51262: Suggestion: Packages should carry a manpage

[brian@debian.org (Brian Mays)]

I (Brian Mays) wrote:

> > While I agree that it is probably a good idea for large packages, with
> > many binaries, to provide such a man page (in section 7, of course), it
> > makes no sense for packages in general.  Personally, I think that such
> > policy would be a waste of our developers' time to write these pages and
> > a waste of disk space to store them.

Goswin Brederlow added:

> In the case of most packages the main binary will be named just like
> the package, like bash, zsh, gcc,... Of cause I don´t want another
> manpage for the gcc package, the one for gcc is enough.
>
> It should be rare that a package doesn´t contain a binary thats called
> after the package and only for those a separate manpage or a link to
> the main programs manpage should be provided.

[ Here I assume that you are referring to packages that actually
*contain* a binary.  I can think of MANY examples of packages that
contain no binaries at all. ]

The example that you cite is rather poor.  You complain that the pccts
package does not contain a pccts man page, but did you even bother to
read the package's description?  The description clearly lists the main
tools (binaries) contained in the package.  Why wasn't that sufficient?

What I'm trying to avoid is wasting my time writing a silly man page
listing two binaries contained in a small package (e.g., netcdf-bin)
that are already described in the package's description field.

Brian