> Policy says that any binary must come with a manpage. I would like to > have the same for packages.
For every package? You must be kidding!! > I just looked for a parser generator that outputs C++ code and found > pccts. After installation I tried "man pccts", but that failed. > /usr/doc/pccts doesn't contain examples, so how do I use the thing? > pccts in fact contains several binaries, but non is called pccts. The > main binary is called antlr and has a good manpage. > My suggestion is now, that "man pccts" should either point to the > main binaries manpage or show a page that gives a one-line description > of the binaries of the package or one that has just relevant "see > also: xxx" entries. > What do you think? While I agree that it is probably a good idea for large packages, with many binaries, to provide such a man page (in section 7, of course), it makes no sense for packages in general. Personally, I think that such policy would be a waste of our developers' time to write these pages and a waste of disk space to store them. Besides, is it so difficult to do "dpkg -L pccts"? If you want a list of the binaries, then try "dpkg -L pccs | grep bin". Perhaps, this should not be an absolute requirement, but a suggestion for large, complex packages that contain a set of many binaries designed to work together. A good example of how this should work is the nmh (or mh) man page, which gives an overview of the nmh (MH) mail system. On a side note, I think, that the nmh (1) man page should be moved to section 7. Brian
