Hello Yitzchak, On Tue, Aug 24, 2010 at 6:06 PM, Yitzchak Gale <g...@sefer.org> wrote: > Package: manpages > Version: 3.05-1 > Severity: normal > > The tzfile.5 man page is very old, from before the Version 2 > format of zoneinfo files was defined. Since version 2010j > of the upstream zoneinfo files, which is the version now used > in the Debian tzdata package, the zoneinfo files are in Version 2 > format. Therefore, the tzfile.5 man page is incorrect - it > does not reflect the format of the zoneinfo files on Debian > systems anymore. > > Fix: please replace tzfile.5 with the version that is > included in the correct version of the tzcode tarball > from upstream. The latest upstream version is at: > > ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub > > But technically, we want the version that exactly corresponds > to the current version of tzcode that is used on Debian, > not the latest version from upstream. > > The correct version of the tzcode tarball is probably > available in the Debian source packages somewhere, > perhaps glibc. If not, historical versions are available at: > > ftp://munnari.oz.au/pub/oldtz > > We currently want the one from tzcode2010j.tar.gz. > > Wouldn't it make more sense for this man page to be > part of the tzdata package, so that the version of the > man page will track the file format used on Debian?
I'm the upstream man-pages maintainer, so can't speak about what Debian does. It may be possible that Andries, who was maintainer back then, remembers something. Here's what I piece together. The upstream man-pages package contains tzfile.5 and tzselect.8 manual pages, and I am guessing that these are shipped by Debian. These pages were added to the man-pages set many years before my time as maintainer, back in release 1.23 (i.e., in the 1990s). Back then, the Announce file contained this text: [[ section 5 and 8 man pages for the timezone utilities. [The latter were taken from ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub/tzcode1998h.tar.gz. Nowadays the timezone code, data and programs described in these manpages come with glibc, but the manpages don't. Stupid GNUheads. GNU seems to strongly dislike man pages, and either ships no man page at all, as e.g. for diff, or ships very ugly man pages, mechanically generated from some other format, like a help text. In a few cases otherwise good man pages have been spoilt by inserting the message that one should rather read the info file, even in cases where in fact the info file is less informative and less correct. In the timezone case the man pages were thrown out, but no info file was created: "better a user without docs than a user reading a man page". As long as this situation lasts we also ship some Section 1 man pages here.] ]] Checking ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub, I see that it contains tzfile.5 and tzselect.8 manual pages. The tzfile.5 page at elsie contains new info that isn't in the man-pages version of this page. On the other hand, there seems to be no content difference in the tzselect.8 pages. At this stage, I am not sure whether the correct course of action for me upstream is a) Remove tzfile.5 and tzselect.8 from the man-pages set and tell downstream distributions to get the pages from the tzcode package. b) Update the tzfile.5 page in man-pages, to add the new text in the elsie version of the page. Obviously, this solution is redundant, and prone to bit rot, but it is convenient for downstream folk, since they don't need to take any action. On the other hand, it requires verifying that the tzfile.5 changes correspond to current glibc reality. c) Do nothing. I welcome thoughts on this. Cheers, Michael > -- System Information: > Debian Release: 5.0.5 > APT prefers stable > APT policy: (500, 'stable') > Architecture: i386 (i686) > > Kernel: Linux 2.6.26-2-686 (SMP w/1 CPU core) > Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) > Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash > > manpages depends on no packages. > > manpages recommends no packages. > > Versions of packages manpages suggests: > ii konqueror [man-b 4:3.5.9.dfsg.1-6+lenny1 KDE's advanced file manager, web > b > ii man-db [man-brow 2.5.2-4 on-line manual pager > > -- no debconf information > > > > -- Michael Kerrisk Linux man-pages maintainer; http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/ Author of "The Linux Programming Interface" http://blog.man7.org/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
