Bug#93724: base-files: please move undocumented(7) from manpages (fwd)
Bah, I meant to file this in the bug report, and have the thread
directed there. Sorry for the noise.
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From: cjw44@flatline.org.uk (Colin Watson)
To: debian-policy@lists.debian.org
Subject: Re: Bug#93724: base-files: please move undocumented(7) from manpages
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0104141321080.4877-100000@home.unex.es>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.33.0104141321080.4877-100000@home.unex.es>
Message-ID: <E14pZQK-0006AG-00@riva.ucam.org>
Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2001 18:37:56 +0100
X-Mailing-List: <debian-policy@lists.debian.org> archive/latest/10984
Santiago Vila <sanvila@unex.es> wrote:
>I'm sorry but I'm not willing to do this if the maintainer of the
>manpages package disagrees. Please convince him first. I think the
>policy group should be able to determine where the undocumented(7)
>manpage should go, hence the reassign.
OK ... I assume Nicolás is reading -policy.
>From: Nicolás Lichtmaier <nick@debian.org>
>To: Santiago Vila <sanvila@unex.es>
>Cc: Colin Watson <cjw44@flatline.org.uk>, 93724@bugs.debian.org,
> debiain-devel@lists.debian.org
>Subject: #93724: base-files: please move undocumented(7) from manpages
>
>> > As there was no objection to this on debian-devel, here's the wishlist
>> > bug: please move undocumented(7) from the manpages package into one
>> > marked essential, namely base-files (which I believe to be the best
>> > choice from all the current Essential: yes packages). I imagine some
>> > kind of versioned Replaces: of manpages would be appropriate.
>> >
>> > /usr/{share/,}man/man7/undocumented.7.gz make up approximately 1.5Kb
>> > between them.
>>
>> Ok, I agree it's better to have it in an essential package.
>>
>> Exactly, which version of manpages should base-files "Replaces:"?
>> Latest one? Are there any release in the queue?
>>
>> (I hope not to repeat the /etc/profile mess in base-files_2.1.11 :-)
>
> I think we shouldn't add this non-policy dirty thing to an essential
>package. We don't need this in a policy compliant system.
True, but it looks like very substantial effort will be needed to make
us policy-compliant, and I'd be surprised if it happened before our next
release [1].
>Man should treat a dangling symlink as a non-existant manpage, and show
>a clean and correct message.
The version in incoming is somewhat less noisy, but I will continue to
report dangling symlinks as an error, as there is no good reason why a
man page should need to be a dangling symlink. I imagine that people
will continue to ask (#32019, #53214) for man-db to include
undocumented(7) so that it's there on minimal systems which have the
software installed that's necessary to read man pages (whether it be
man-db or some other man pager) but which don't want the extra 350K
installed by the manpages package.
>The package undocumented.7 is in is already "Priority: important".
That's really irrelevant, I think (certainly the reporters of the two
bugs I mentioned above don't seem to think it's relevant). I'm trying to
point out that many packages symlink to
/usr/{,share/}man/man7/undocumented.7.gz without an explicit dependency,
which is a bug [2] in addition to the bug of being
undocumented in the first place. For the sake of 1.5K I think this is
best corrected by including it in an essential package rather than by
adding substantial dependency bloat to packages that are otherwise
unrelated to manpages.
[1] http://qa.debian.org/man-pages.html
[2] At least as serious, IMHO, as it means man has to display an error
which shouldn't be present with any Debian package, and will
sometimes do so when a user is looking for something totally
unrelated due to man rebuilding its database on the fly. Whether
this is also a bug is debatable.
--
Colin Watson [cjw44@flatline.org.uk]
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