On Sat, Jan 07, 2012 at 08:51:58AM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote:
> Russ Allbery <r...@debian.org> writes:
> 
> > As always, once I start seriously poking at an area of Policy, I see
> > other little things that need to be fixed as well.  Here is a general
> > overhaul of the additional documentation section, which should both
> > address this bug as well as a few other things.
> 
> [...]
> 
> Here is an updated version of the patch with feedback to date taken into
> account.
> 
> diff --git a/policy.sgml b/policy.sgml
> index c1ff4b4..4dce37c 100644
> --- a/policy.sgml
> +++ b/policy.sgml
> @@ -9702,45 +9702,77 @@ END-INFO-DIR-ENTRY
>       </p>
>        </sect>
>  
> -      <sect>
> +      <sect id="docs-additional">
>       <heading>Additional documentation</heading>
>  
>       <p>
> -       Any additional documentation that comes with the package may
> -       be installed at the discretion of the package maintainer.
> -       Plain text documentation should be installed in the directory
> -       <file>/usr/share/doc/<var>package</var></file>, where
> -       <var>package</var> is the name of the package, and
> -          compressed with <tt>gzip -9</tt> unless it is small.
> -        </p>
> +       Any additional documentation that comes with the package may be
> +       installed at the discretion of the package maintainer.  It is
> +       often a good idea to include text information files
> +       (<file>README</file>s, FAQs, and so forth) that come with the
> +       source package in the binary package.  However, you don't need
> +       to install the instructions for building and installing the
> +       package, of course!
> +     </p>
>  
>       <p>
> -       If a package comes with large amounts of documentation which
> -       many users of the package will not require you should create
> -       a separate binary package to contain it, so that it does not
> -       take up disk space on the machines of users who do not need
> -       or want it installed.</p>
> +       Plain text documentation should be compressed with <tt>gzip
> +       -9</tt> unless it is small.
> +     </p>
>  
>       <p>
> -       It is often a good idea to put text information files
> -       (<file>README</file>s, changelogs, and so forth) that come with
> -       the source package in <file>/usr/share/doc/<var>package</var></file>
> -       in the binary package.  However, you don't need to install
> -       the instructions for building and installing the package, of
> -       course!</p>
> +       If a package comes with large amounts of documentation that many
> +       users of the package will not require, you should create a
> +       separate binary package to contain it so that it does not take
> +       up disk space on the machines of users who do not need or want
> +       it installed.  As a special case of this rule, shared library
> +       documentation of any appreciable size should always be packaged
> +       with the library development package (<ref id="sharedlibs-dev">)
> +       or in a separate documentation package, since shared libraries
> +       are frequently installed as dependencies of other packages by
> +       users who have little interest in documentation of the library
> +       itself.  The documentation package for the
> +       package <var>package</var> is conventionally
> +       named <var>package</var>-doc
> +       (or <var>package</var>-doc-<var>language-code</var> if there are
> +       separate documentation packages for multiple languages).
> +     </p>
> +
> +     <p>
> +       Additional documentation included in the package should be
> +       installed under <file>/usr/share/doc/<var>package</var></file>.
> +       If the documentation is packaged separately,
> +       as <var>package</var>-doc for example, it may be installed under
> +       either that path or into the documentation directory for the
> +       separate documentation package
> +       (<file>/usr/share/doc/<var>package</var>-doc</file> in this
> +       example).  However, installing the documentation into the
> +       documentation directory of the main package is preferred since
> +       it is independent of the packaging method and will be easier for
> +       users to find.
> +     </p>
> +
> +     <p>
> +       Any separate package providing documentation must still install
> +       standard documentation files in its
> +       own <file>/usr/share/doc</file> directory as specified in the
> +       rest of this policy.  See, for example, <ref id="copyrightfile">
> +       and <ref id="changelogs">.
> +     </p>
>  
>       <p>
>         Packages must not require the existence of any files in
>         <file>/usr/share/doc/</file> in order to function
>         <footnote>
> -           The system administrator should be able to
> -           delete files in <file>/usr/share/doc/</file> without causing
> -           any programs to break.
> -       </footnote>.
> -       Any files that are referenced by programs but are also
> -       useful as stand alone documentation should be installed under
> -       <file>/usr/share/<var>package</var>/</file> with symbolic links from
> -       <file>/usr/share/doc/<var>package</var></file>.
> +         The system administrator should be able to delete files
> +         in <file>/usr/share/doc/</file> without causing any programs
> +         to break.
> +       </footnote>.  Any files that are used or read by programs but
> +       are also useful as stand alone documentation should be installed
> +       elsewhere, such as
> +       under <file>/usr/share/<var>package</var>/</file>, and then
> +       included via symbolic links
> +       in <file>/usr/share/doc/<var>package</var></file>.
>       </p>
>  
>       <p>
> @@ -9760,18 +9792,6 @@ END-INFO-DIR-ENTRY
>              </p>
>            </footnote>
>       </p>
> -
> -     <p>
> -       Former Debian releases placed all additional documentation
> -       in <file>/usr/doc/<var>package</var></file>.  This has been
> -       changed to <file>/usr/share/doc/<var>package</var></file>,
> -       and packages must not put documentation in the directory
> -       <file>/usr/doc/<var>package</var></file>. <footnote>
> -         At this phase of the transition, we no longer require a
> -         symbolic link in <file>/usr/doc/</file>. At a later point,
> -         policy shall change to make the symbolic links a bug.
> -       </footnote>
> -     </p>
>        </sect>
>  
>        <sect>
> @@ -9782,16 +9802,16 @@ END-INFO-DIR-ENTRY
>         via HTML.</p>
>  
>       <p>
> -       If your package comes with extensive documentation in a
> +       If the package comes with extensive documentation in a
>         markup format that can be converted to various other formats
>         you should if possible ship HTML versions in a binary
> -       package, in the directory
> -       <file>/usr/share/doc/<var>appropriate-package</var></file> or
> -       its subdirectories.<footnote>
> -           The rationale: The important thing here is that HTML
> -           docs should be available in <em>some</em> package, not
> -           necessarily in the main binary package.
> +       package.<footnote>
> +           Rationale: The important thing here is that HTML
> +           documentation should be available from <em>some</em>
> +           binary package.
>         </footnote>
> +       The documentation must be installed as specified in
> +       <ref id="docs-additional">.
>       </p>
>  
>       <p>

Seconded. I suggest we move forward with this and that I apply it to master
next week, if Russ is still OK with this.

Cheers,
-- 
Bill. <ballo...@debian.org>

Imagine a large red swirl here. 

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