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Darren Benham (administrator, Debian Bugs database) -------------------------------------- Received: (at submit) by bugs.debian.org; 23 Apr 2001 16:11:17 +0000 >From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Mon Apr 23 11:11:17 2001 Return-path: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Received: from mta01-svc.ntlworld.com [62.253.162.41] by master.debian.org with esmtp (Exim 3.12 1 (Debian)) id 14rivk-0006Hf-00; Mon, 23 Apr 2001 11:11:16 -0500 Received: from riva.ucam.org ([62.253.132.58]) by mta01-svc.ntlworld.com (InterMail vM.4.01.02.27 201-229-119-110) with ESMTP id <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> for <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; Mon, 23 Apr 2001 17:11:07 +0100 Received: from cjw44 by riva.ucam.org with local (Exim 3.22 #1 (Debian)) for [EMAIL PROTECTED] id 14rivb-0001Bg-00; Mon, 23 Apr 2001 17:11:07 +0100 Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2001 17:11:06 +0100 From: Colin Watson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PROPOSAL] Clarifying instructions on linking man pages Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> References: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.17i In-Reply-To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; from [EMAIL PROTECTED] on Sat, Apr 21, 2001 at 06:57:48PM +0100 Organization: riva.ucam.org Sender: Colin Watson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Delivered-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Package: debian-policy Version: 3.5.3.0 Severity: wishlist [I've clarified this proposal slightly from what I originally posted on debian-policy, in response to Chris Waters' comments.] A recent discussion on debian-mentors [1] brought it to my attention that packages frequently rely on an implementation detail of man: that it holds a database of whatis entries and happens to be able to find pages even if the file containing the man page has a different name that doesn't appear in the filesystem. For instance, look at xli(1), which says it describes "xli, xsetbg, xview" - but xsetbg(1x) is a different man page provided by the xloadimage package, and xli doesn't provide xsetbg.1.gz itself. (Nor does it provide any executable called xsetbg, in fact, but that's a different bug. builtins(1) is perhaps a better example.) If you don't have xloadimage installed, 'man xsetbg' will eventually work, but if the man database happens not to be up to date (because you've just installed some new man pages, for instance) then it has to grovel through all your manual page hierarchies to find the most appropriate page to show. If you have neither xli nor xloadimage installed, then man might have to look through lots of man pages anyway just to be able to tell you that it can't find anything appropriate. The current implementation of all of this could be improved somewhat, but that's not really the point. Since it's fundamentally a horrible mess, I'd like to deprecate the practice of relying on man working this out (very ... slowly ...) for itself and have packages install symlinks instead (or .so links or hard links, although those are already mildly deprecated). man's database is meant for supporting apropos and that sort of thing, not for doing a job that really should be kept in the filesystem. In addition, some other implementation of man might well not handle this: in point of fact, Andries Brouwer's implementation, used in several other GNU/Linux distributions, doesn't. As I read it, current policy seems to implicitly expect that packages should use the filesystem for this purpose: If one manpage needs to be accessible via several names it is better to use a symbolic link than the .so feature, but there is no need to fiddle with the relevant parts of the upstream source to change from .so to symlinks--don't do it unless it's easy. You should not create hard links in the manual page directories, nor put absolute filenames in .so directives. The filename in a .so in a manpage should be relative to the base of the manpage tree (usually /usr/share/man). It doesn't even consider the possibility that packages might not install any kind of link (.so, symbolic, or hard) in the filesystem. I propose the following diff to policy to clarify this: --- policy.sgml.orig Sat Apr 21 14:05:54 2001 +++ policy.sgml Sat Apr 21 18:15:04 2001 @@ -6528,7 +6528,24 @@ absolute filenames in <tt>.so</tt> directives. The filename in a <tt>.so</tt> in a manpage should be relative to the base of the manpage tree (usually - <tt>/usr/share/man</tt>).</p></sect> + <tt>/usr/share/man</tt>). If you do not create any links + (whether symlinks, hard links, or .so directives) in the + filesystem to the alternate names of the manpage, then you + should not rely on <prgn>man</prgn> finding your manpage + under those names based solely on the information in the + manpage's header. + <footnote> + <p> + Supporting this in <prgn>man</prgn> often requires + unreasonable processing time to find a manual page or to + report that none exists, and moves knowledge into man's + database that would be better left in the filesystem. + This support is therefore deprecated and will cease to be + present in the future. + </p> + </footnote> + </p> + </sect> <sect> Before woody is released, I'd like to drop support for this in man (perhaps unless you use some option or other). Currently, my count on auric [2] gives 1810 secondary names of man pages, excluding non-US, that rely on this 'feature' of man; these names are referred to in 377 unique man pages. For comparison, there are 6974 man page names referred to via .so, symbolic, or hard links. The effect on packages of removing this feature will be that man pages will only be guaranteed to be accessible by names in the filesystem, which I don't expect to be a major problem in the short term considering how much more usable the whole thing will become for people with even moderately substantial numbers of packages installed. I'll file (normal) bugs as necessary, and fixing these will be a matter of installing additional symlinks. Given that the man package used in many other distributions doesn't support this, and that in fact the feature seems to be a non-standard extension in the man-db package we use, I don't expect this to cause any significant interoperability problems. I'm looking for seconders for this proposal. [1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-mentors-0104/msg00202.html [2] for x in `grep-dctrl -rnsFilename . \ /org/ftp.debian.org/ftp/dists/sid/*/*/Packages | sort -u`; \ do dpkg --fsys-tarfile /org/ftp.debian.org/ftp/$x | \ tar -xkf - {./,}usr/{,share/,X11R6/}man/ 2>/dev/null; \ done; \ cp /usr/lib/man-db/mandb .; \ for x in usr/{,share/,X11R6/}man; do ./mandb $x; done; \ for x in usr/{,share/,X11R6/}man; \ do echo $x:; /usr/sbin/accessdb $x/index.bt | \ perl -nle \ 'if (/ -> "[^ ]* [^ ]* [^ ]* C (.+?) /) { $count++; $ref{$1}++; } END { print "$count names in ", scalar keys %ref, " unique pages"; }'; \ done Thanks, -- Colin Watson (man-db maintainer) [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------- Received: (at 94995-done) by bugs.debian.org; 7 Jun 2001 23:34:03 +0000 >From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Thu Jun 07 18:34:02 2001 Return-path: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Received: from murphy.debian.org [::ffff:216.234.231.6] by master.debian.org with smtp (Exim 3.12 1 (Debian)) id 1589Hu-0002qu-00; Thu, 07 Jun 2001 18:34:02 -0500 Received: (qmail 3860 invoked from network); 7 Jun 2001 23:31:27 -0000 Received: from mserv1e.vianw.co.uk (195.102.240.97) by murphy.debian.org with SMTP; 7 Jun 2001 23:31:27 -0000 Received: from [195.102.197.85] (helo=polya) by mserv1e.vianw.co.uk with esmtp (Exim 3.22 #5) id 1589Er-0007Ry-00; Fri, 08 Jun 2001 00:30:54 +0100 Received: from jdg by polya with local (Exim 3.22 #1 (Debian)) id 1589Eo-000103-00; Fri, 08 Jun 2001 00:30:50 +0100 Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2001 00:30:50 +0100 From: Julian Gilbey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: debian-policy_3.5.5.0_i386.changes INSTALLED Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.18i Sender: Julian Gilbey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Delivered-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ----- Forwarded message from Debian Installer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ----- Date: Mon, 04 Jun 2001 10:23:07 -0400 From: Debian Installer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: debian-policy_3.5.5.0_i386.changes INSTALLED To: Julian Gilbey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Debian Policy List <debian-policy@lists.debian.org> Installing: debian-policy_3.5.5.0.tar.gz to pool/main/d/debian-policy/debian-policy_3.5.5.0.tar.gz policy-process.txt.gz byhand libc6-migration.txt byhand fhs.txt byhand debian-policy_3.5.5.0_all.deb to pool/main/d/debian-policy/debian-policy_3.5.5.0_all.deb perl-policy.txt.gz byhand menu-policy.txt.gz byhand mime-policy.txt.gz byhand virtual-package-names-list.txt byhand upgrading-checklist.txt byhand fhs-2.1.html.tar.gz byhand policy.pdf.gz byhand menu-policy.html.tar.gz byhand policy.html.tar.gz byhand mime-policy.html.tar.gz byhand debconf_specification.html byhand debconf_specification.txt.gz byhand policy.txt.gz byhand policy-process.html.tar.gz byhand perl-policy.html.tar.gz byhand debian-policy_3.5.5.0.dsc to pool/main/d/debian-policy/debian-policy_3.5.5.0.dsc policy.ps.gz byhand Changes: debian-policy (3.5.5.0) unstable; urgency=low . * Fixed up incorrect entries in the changelog (there was an erroneous 3.5.0.1 revision which never happened; it has now been correctly merged with the 3.5.3.0 changelog entry) * Add section numbers to upgrading-checklist for all revisions from 3.0.0 onwards * Complete rewrite (and renumbering) of sections 9.1 and 9,2 * This time *really* include the HTML version of the FHS * Added doc-base support for all of the HTML files * Added several more files to the byhand list and rewrote chunks of debian/rules to do this * Add patched versions of debiandoc-sgml stuff to source package until patches are incorporated upstream * Versioned Build-Depend on debiandoc-sgml for fixed Text.pm * Improved mkdir example in 10.1.2 closes: Bug#92744 * Made the "where examples live" entry in the upgrading-checklist clearer (add "for use by scripts") * Add a dpkg-statoverride description section closes: Bug#89473 * Fix the ldconfig usage description (remove "only if") closes: Bug#89674 * Clarification of package priority issues vis-a-vis the X Windows system closes: Bug#91249 * Enhanced x-terminal-emulator policy closes: Bug#91252 * Minor changes to X app-defaults policy closes: Bug#91259 * Clarification of X policy in respect to FHS closes: Bug#91260 * OpenMotif has the same rules as OSF/Motif closes: Bug#91261 * The X Font policy rewrite closes: Bug#91257 * The "man" program is no longer guaranteed to read header information to find alternative manpage names closes: Bug#94995 * Correction to meaning of Standards-Version closes: Bug#97072 * Split section 12.8 (X Window System) into subsections for readability * Plug-ins != shared libraries (at last) closes: Bug#66023 * Add packaging manual remnants to policy document as appendices, and mention this in control file closes: Bug#95906 * Clarification in Perl policy closes: Bug#98712 Announcing to debian-devel-changes@lists.debian.org Setting bugs to severity fixed: 66023 89473 89674 91249 91252 91257 91259 91260 91261 92744 94995 95906 97072 98712 Thank you for your contribution to Debian. ----- End forwarded message -----