Am 25.06.2023 um 15:36 schrieb Jon Turney:
On 21/06/2023 22:45, Thomas Wolff via Cygwin-apps wrote:
Am 16.02.2023 um 20:17 schrieb Thomas Wolff via Cygwin-apps:
Am 16.02.2023 um 19:59 schrieb Jon Turney:
On 21/01/2023 17:04, Thomas Wolff via Cygwin-apps wrote:
italic-man installs two scripts and hooks them into the workflow
of the 'man' command so that the italic attribute of manual pages
is actually displayed as italics in terminals that support it.
cygport file attached
Thanks very much for having another go at this.
I'm still not overly keen on postinstall/preremove scripts which
modify a configuration file belonging to another package, so I
think I'm going to defer to Achim on approving this.
Taking a step back, may I ask a couple of questions?
- Can this be done as a patch to man-db and/or groff?
(perhaps with a separate man-italic package which just contains a
marker file which enables the functionality?)
- (If different) how would this be done in an upstreamable way?
Thanks for taking a look.
I understand your hesitation but there are a number of zp_
postinstall scripts around that make updates to mandb, mime db,
desktop, various caches, maybe crontab.
There's a difference between updating a cache or db of files which
exist on the filesystem after the package update and modifying a file
which might be overwritten by reinstalling or updating a different
package.
Well, yes, there could be a zp_ script for man that makes this entry
to /etc/man_db.conf itself in the presence of the italic-man
package. If that's desired and someone else updates man, I will
cooperate on this.
I think the installation of italic-man does this in an upstreamable
way except for the postinstall mechanism of course which seems to be
different (if existent at all) everywhere.
Thomas
I've added a zp_man-db-italic.dash postinstall script as a proposal
for man-db to address your concerns, to be found in the repository
github.com/mintty/italic-man. However, I find not documentation about
these zp_ things, it seems they are just all called after each setup. So
They are briefly covered in [1]. If that's missing some details,
please let me know and I'll see what can be done to improve it.
[1] https://cygwin.com/packaging-package-files.html#postinstall
would it actually make a difference whether the zp_ is a script of
italic-man or of man-db? I've also added a cygport file to the
repository so you can try the update if you like.
Still interested in your opinion about this question. Also whether it's
OK that package italic-man provided a zp script that modified
/etc/man_db.conf.
About your first question
- Can this be done as a patch to man-db and/or groff?
Do you mean the whole thing should not be a separate package at all
but completely patched into man-db?
Well, yes, that would avoid all the knots caused by post-install
scripts with uncertain ordering I'm worrying about.
I think I have addressed those uncertainties and the problem with the
man-db patch is that man-db package maintainers would need to take up
the issue...
Can you explain, in general terms, why this isn't a feature of stock
man-db already?
There is option grotty -i in stock man-db but grotty is a tool deeply
embedded in the man toolchain and there is no user-friendly documented
way to inject this option into the toolchain, other than replacing
grotty with a wrapper script which is effectively all my package does.
Looking forward to your opinion and that of the man-db package
maintainer.
And yes, the hook works on Linux too, so it could be provided somehow
upstream.
Thanks continuing to grind away at this.
