On 06/10/2026 8:54 am, Vincent Lefevre wrote:
On 2026-10-04 11:03:38 +0700, Max Nikulin wrote:
Notice that in #34668 you complain concerning man pages that actually are
maintained by a separate project. It may be annoying to glibc developers.
No, Debian's version of the nscd(8) man page is part of the
glibc source:
qaa:~> apt-file search man/man8/nscd.8
nscd: /usr/share/man/man8/nscd.8.gz
It is a Debian bug that the bundled man page is not synced with the
<https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/> project. #34668 is filed against
glibc upstream, so it may mention 3rd party man pages in various
contexts, but it is not the proper place to ask for adding more details
to man pages.
glibc being the source package of nscd, and in the man page:
GNU C Library 2.2 January 07, 2001 NSCD(8)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Then perhaps it was due to some changes in man machinery unrelated to
glibc Debian packages.
This bug report indirectly says that users expect to find man pages that may
be more convenient than info manuals. On the other hand, it is for those who
defines GNU&FSF policies. Glibc developers just follow imposed rules. It is
better to ask for actions that may be performed by project developers, e.g.
to add .texi docs.
The glibc manual does not provide any information about nscd!!!
I do not mind that information on nscd is rather scarce. However in the
scope of glibc upstream bug #34668 likely the only possible action is to
describe it in .texi files, not in man pages.
I think, it is assumed that (info "(libc) Name Service Switch") is
detailed enough and nscd is just a thin caching layer that does not
deserve dedicated description.
On 05/10/2026 3:49 am, Jeffrey Walton wrote:> I would not say "against
man pages." Rather, I would say, the info
pages are authoritative and the man pages are optional. From the GNU
Coding Standards,
<https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/standards.html#Man-Pages>
In my opinion, the document, you cited, confirms my words. It rather
strongly discourage maintaining of man pages. As the result:
- Man pages are maintained by another project.
- Man pages in Debian are out of sync with upstream.
- "getent --no-addrconfig" has not been added to the man page.
- "strict-error" has not been added to resolv.conf(5).
- New options are not mentioned in the glibc reference as well.
It looks like overall amount of maintenance job is larger.
