Bug#169399: handling of additional documentation with doc-base

[Josip Rodin <joy@gkvk.hr>]

Package: debian-policy
Severity: wishlist

Hi,

Surprisingly enough, we have yet to put any mention of doc-base into the
Policy. A lot of the packages that need it use it by now[1], so it appears
to be working properly. It would be useful if it was "legalized" by the
Policy Manual so that new maintainers can't miss it for example, and that
existing maintainers can't ignore it saying "it's not in Policy, so what if
it's a good idea!".

So, I propose an addition like this into the section 
13.3 "Additional documentation":

  All additional documentation should be registered via doc-base so that
  is made available in generic documentation viewers (such as dhelp, dwww
  or doc-central). Please refer to the doc-base manual in the doc-base
  package for all the information on the exact technical implementation.

That makes not having doc-base files a normal or minor bug, which seems
reasonable to me.

(Linking within the paragraph is left as an exercise to the policy editor,
e.g., myself. :)

[1] For reference, on my machine:

% dpkg -S /usr/share/doc-base/* | cut -d: -f1 | sort -u | wc -l
     58
% dpkg -l | grep ^.i -c
688

Considerable percentage, even...

-- 
     2. That which causes joy or happiness.