Re: Wait, it *DOES* say all programs! (was Re: Custom undocumented(7)s)

[Joey Hess <joeyh@debian.org>]

Chris Waters wrote:
> Actually....checking...this seems to be true, and I don't think we
> want it to be true.  Every program that's found in the default path,
> yes, but I was certainly under the impression that we don't want or
> need man pages for what might be called "private binaries",
> i.e. programs not intended to be run directly -- programs that should
> usually be found in /usr/lib/whatsit.
> 
> So, as long as we're discussing the modification of 6.1, perhaps we
> should address this issue as well.  Unless I'm overlooking something
> in policy that already addresses this.

Well I don't know, policy paints all library function calls with the same
brush:

     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 undocumented(7) manual page
     should be provided.  This symbolic link can be created from
     debian/rules' like this:

The point seems to be, if it's something people would reasonably expect find
a man page on, something should be done.

-- 
see shy jo, in New York