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Re: I'm sorry to open another can of worms but.. /usr/share/man transition



> Well we arn't getting anywhere at all with a good transition to
> /usr/share/doc, but perhaps this will be easier.
> 
> I'm concerned about what happens when packages start using /usr/share/man.
> Suppose I convert alien to put it's man pages there. Alien is arch
> independant and there is no reason someone using stable can't install the
> latest version from unstable. But when they do, they discover they can no
> longer read alien's man page, becuase their old man browser doesn't grok
> /usr/share/man. What to do?

I am extremely wary of adding large amounts of code to support partial
upgrades.  While we do ensure that the dependenies make the dynamic
linking and suchlike work without a hitch, I do not see it as
reasonable to require every package to state the versions of:
  man-db, info, doc-reader, [add your favourite package which will
  look in the wrong place after the FHS move], ...
upon which they depend, or which they recommend.  This would
approximately double the number or dependencies, mostly
unnecessarily.  If we are making such a huge change to the system,
introducing the FHS, should we perhaps release potato as Debian 3.0
and warn that partial upgrades/downgrades between 2.1 and 3.0 may have
nasty consequences in terms of FHS-issues?  An incremented major
number would tend to suggest a major change.

   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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