brian m. carlson sand...@crustytoothpaste.ath.cx wrote:
Package: coreutils
Version: 6.10-6
Severity: normal
The manpage for id does not describe what information it prints. It
should state that by default, the information printed is the username
and userid, default/current group name and group id, and the list of
groups (and the group ids) to which that user belongs, instead of merely
stating Without any OPTION, print some useful set of identified [sic]
information.
The description should be changed from Print information for USERNAME,
or the current user. to Print information about the user and groups
for the user specified by USERNAME, or the current user if USERNAME is
not specified.
Good idea.
A user who has never heard of id should be able to determine how to
properly use it by looking solely at the manual page. In its current
state, that's apparently not the case; hence, this bug.
If you specify whether you'd like the manpage in man, mdoc, or DocBook
5.0 format, I'll happily provide you with a non-autogenerated manpage
with useful information.
Thanks! If you'd like to contribute more to coreutils,
instructions/guidelines are here:
http://git.sv.gnu.org/cgit/coreutils.git/plain/HACKING
I'll soon push the following change upstream:
From 4ca909e06dbc8dfa998b70d28a8fbf95991c12b1 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Jim Meyering meyer...@redhat.com
Date: Sat, 14 Feb 2009 09:09:17 +0100
Subject: [PATCH] doc: id: make --help and .man more descriptive
* src/id.c (usage): Improve description, based on a suggestion
from Brian M. Carlson in http://bugs.debian.org/514675
* man/id.x: Use a better one-liner, based on the one at top of id.c.
---
THANKS |1 +
man/id.x |2 +-
src/id.c |3 ++-
3 files changed, 4 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
diff --git a/THANKS b/THANKS
index a3f9801..bedb01a 100644
--- a/THANKS
+++ b/THANKS
@@ -82,6 +82,7 @@ Bob Proulx r...@fc.hp.com
Branden Robinsonbran...@necrotic.deadbeast.net
Brendan O'Dea b...@compusol.com.au
Brian Kimball b...@footbag.org
+Brian M. Carlsonsand...@crustytoothpaste.ath.cx
Brian Silverman bsilver...@conceptxdesign.com
Brian Youmans 3d...@gnu.org
Bruce Korb bk...@veritas.com
diff --git a/man/id.x b/man/id.x
index 4c990ac..d55b326 100644
--- a/man/id.x
+++ b/man/id.x
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
[NAME]
-id \- print user identity
+id \- print real and effective user and group IDs
[DESCRIPTION]
.\ Add any additional description here
diff --git a/src/id.c b/src/id.c
index 05ad2d8..78f78e0 100644
--- a/src/id.c
+++ b/src/id.c
@@ -81,7 +81,8 @@ usage (int status)
{
printf (_(Usage: %s [OPTION]... [USERNAME]\n), program_name);
fputs (_(\
-Print information for USERNAME, or the current user.\n\
+Print user and group information for the specified USERNAME,\n\
+or (when USERNAME omitted) for the current user.\n\
\n\
-a ignore, for compatibility with other versions\n\
-Z, --context print only the security context of the current user\n\
--
1.6.2.rc0.234.g2cc0b3
--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
