Except that datadir is for read-only architecture-independent data, and man pages are not architecture-independent. Granted, it is possible to reorganize the subdirs into arch-specific subdirs, but that is not presently the case. Also, different machines may have different versions of software that requires different versions of man pages.
H -- > Richard B. Kreckel writes: > > On Sat, 5 Jan 2002, Peter Eisentraut wrote: > > > > When upgrading some packages to AutoConf-2.52 I noticed that given > > > > --prefix=/usr, manpages go straight into /usr/man/. Hmm, but we got a > > > > filesystem hierarchy standard <http://www.pathname.com/fhs/>! > > > > > > But we've also got the GNU Coding Standards > > > <http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards_toc.html>. > > > > Okay, but I am unable to spot the contradiction with FHS. For instance, > > it says: > > > > `mandir' > > The top-level directory for installing the man pages (if any) for > > this package. It will normally be `/usr/local/man', but you should > > write it as `$(prefix)/man'. (If you are using Autoconf, write it as > > `@mandir@'.) > > > > There, $(prefix)/man would be problematic, but if the Autoconf-generated > > configure would replace Makefile.in's @mandir@ with something appropiate > > everybody would be merry. Wrong? > > I think the GNU Coding standards need revision in this regard. > > While I think that FHS was initiated by the Linux camp (not sure; I'm > willing to be educated :), at least some commercial Unices now have the > man pages under /usr/share/man (with a link from /usr/man for backwards > compatibility), and this is exactly how I have been setting up > $(prefix)/man here for years, because we have a /usr/local for a variety > of architectures, and there's no need to have more than one copy of man > pages and other static, shareable data. >
