On Fri, 2010-08-27 at 10:16 -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
> Andrew McMillan <andrew@morphoss.com> writes:
>
> > My personal preference would be to encourage -doc packages to install
> > their files into /usr/share/doc/<package>/docs - including their
> > internal administrivia.
>
> That would break Lintian, apt-listchanges, probably the DAK processing
> scripts, and anything else that looks at copyright and changelog in binary
> packages. I don't think it's worth it to make that change.
>
> > While this is not current practice, I'm not convinced that current
> > practice has evolved into what was suggested in 2003 either.
>
> Right now, I'm seeing a real mix of behavior, with some packages
> installing all the documentation into the -doc package's /usr/share/doc
> (probably in part because that's easier) and others installing it into the
> parent package, some with symlinks and some without. As a result, right
> now one cannot easily find the documentation in any standardized place.
>
> > I also remember as a user hunting for these documents the first time or
> > two when I had installed the -doc package and it slowly dawning on me
> > that they weren't anywhere in /usr/share/doc/<package>, and I think that
> > breaks the principal of least surprise, for everyone except long-time,
> > hard-core Debianista.
>
> Yeah, that's what Ben's writeup would fix, and I agree that's worth
> fixing.
>
> > Those points are justifications for both proposals, of course, and I
> > guess that one reason for retaining the administrivia
> > in /usr/share/doc/<package>-doc might be that there are tools that
> > expect to find it there. Is that the case?
>
> Yup.
>
> > I don't think I ever do more than refer to them by hand, and either
> > proposed change can probably be codified in some small number of
> > scripts.
>
> I don't think the change proposed here requires changing any scripts,
> although it will require changing a bunch of packages (and a change to
> debhelper to make it easier to install docs into the right place would be
> useful).
In that case I support changing it the way Ben proposes. I can
certainly see the value of standardising it, and doing it this way
definitely improves the situation.
Cheers,
Andrew.
--
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andrew (AT) morphoss (DOT) com +64(272)DEBIAN
I'll burn my books.
-- Christopher Marlowe
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