Bug#51262: Suggestion: Packages should carry a manpage
> Policy says that any binary must come with a manpage. I would like to
> have the same for packages.
For every package? You must be kidding!!
> I just looked for a parser generator that outputs C++ code and found
> pccts. After installation I tried "man pccts", but that failed.
> /usr/doc/pccts doesn't contain examples, so how do I use the thing?
> pccts in fact contains several binaries, but non is called pccts. The
> main binary is called antlr and has a good manpage.
> My suggestion is now, that "man pccts" should either point to the
> main binaries manpage or show a page that gives a one-line description
> of the binaries of the package or one that has just relevant "see
> also: xxx" entries.
> What do you think?
While I agree that it is probably a good idea for large packages, with
many binaries, to provide such a man page (in section 7, of course), it
makes no sense for packages in general. Personally, I think that such
policy would be a waste of our developers' time to write these pages and
a waste of disk space to store them.
Besides, is it so difficult to do "dpkg -L pccts"? If you want a list
of the binaries, then try "dpkg -L pccs | grep bin".
Perhaps, this should not be an absolute requirement, but a suggestion
for large, complex packages that contain a set of many binaries designed
to work together. A good example of how this should work is the nmh (or
mh) man page, which gives an overview of the nmh (MH) mail system. On a
side note, I think, that the nmh (1) man page should be moved to section
7.
Brian
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