Bug#94995: PROPOSAL] Clarifying instructions on linking man pages

[cjw44@flatline.org.uk (Colin Watson)]

Joey Hess <joeyh@debian.org>, 94995@bugs.debian.org wrote:
>Colin Watson wrote:
>> -	  <tt>/usr/share/man</tt>).</p></sect>
>> +	  <tt>/usr/share/man</tt>). If you do not create any links
>> +	  (whether symlinks, hard links, or .so directives) in the
>> +	  filesystem to the alternate names of the manpage, then you
>> +	  should not rely on <prgn>man</prgn> finding your manpage
>> +	  under those names based solely on the information in the
>> +	  manpage's header.
>> +	  <footnote>
>> +	   <p>
>> +	    Supporting this in <prgn>man</prgn> often requires
>> +	    unreasonable processing time to find a manual page or to
>> +	    report that none exists, and moves knowledge into man's
>> +	    database that would be better left in the filesystem.
>> +	    This support is therefore deprecated and will cease to be
>> +	    present in the future.
>> +	   </p>
>> +	  </footnote>
>> +	</p>
>> +      </sect>
>
>I second this proposal.

Thanks for your support. There have been one second and no formal
objections so far; is anybody else interested in this proposal? As far
as I can see, policy is the right place for this, as this diff goes
alongside a number of related comments about the decisions we've made on
how man pages should be installed in the Debian system.

-- 
Colin Watson                                     [cjw44@flatline.org.uk]