Bug#218630: [PATCH] fix dh_installwm manpages
On Sun, Nov 09, 2003 at 05:41:02PM +0000, Matthew Wilcox wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 07, 2003 at 10:44:34PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote:
> > There may actually be a problem with installing alternatives to
> > manpages.
> >
> > See <URL: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=218630 >.
> >
> > I don't know what to do about this yet.
>
> I don't understand the problem ;-)
>
> Why does man choose to display x-terminal-emulator(1) when I
> ask it for xterm? It happens on my system (and I also have
> x-terminal-emulator pointing to uxterm). From an strace, I see
> man opening /var/cache/man/index.db and then choosing to open
> /usr/share/man/man1/x-terminal-emulator.1.gz
>
> But according to man(1), specifying -u should cause this database to be
> updated if it no longer represents the filesystem. This doesn't help
> though (man xterm still brings up x-terminal-emulator). I'm confused.
>
> In any event, I can't produce an analagous problem with lwm/twm.
> man lwm brings up the lwm(1x) manapge, man twm brings up the twm(1x)
> manpage and man x-window-manager brings up lwm(1x). update-alternatives
> does the correct thing (lwm and twm still come up appropriately and
> x-window-manager now brings up twm(1x)).
>
> It almost looks as if man has some special knowledge that xterm really
> should mean x-terminal-emulator, which is quite ridiculous. Is there
> perhaps some configuration or manpage directive I've overlooked?
No, I shouldn't think so. Something has gone stupid in man's database or
its handling of that database, I think, which is very likely a bug.
Indeed, I don't think it should be touching the database at all here.
Could somebody who can reproduce this bug (not me at the moment) please
(a) run 'man -d xterm' and (b) run 'accessdb | egrep
"(xterm|x-terminal-emulator)"'? Thanks.
This is also bug #204249, which I unfortunately hadn't had time to look
at until now, so I'm extending the already long Cc: list to include
that.
Cheers,
--
Colin Watson [cjwatson@flatline.org.uk]
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