On Sat, Jan 25, 2025 at 5:21 AM Bill Allombert <ballo...@debian.org> wrote: > The man page provides a link between the executable name and the app. > This is useful in a lot of situation. Writing such a manpage is not > a waste of time.
I think apps already have .desktop files that provide that link. As an example of how new contributors are taking time to make manpages that are not helpful only to silence a Lintian warning, see https://salsa.debian.org/danialbehzadi/showtime/-/blob/debian/latest/debian/showtime.1 which was created today. For an example of an app that I don't believe needs a manpage, see gnome-clocks. It provides useful information about itself in the About dialog and in the user Help, both can be easily accessed in the ☰ menu. I think manpages can be helpful for command line utilities. I use manpages myself frequently. I especially appreciate https://manpages.debian.org/ which allows me to make use of documentation without needing to install anything. My opinion is that current Debian Policy and the associated Lintian warning are encouraging Debian contributors to simply run help2man, either in debian/rules or once when they create an initial package. I am skeptical whether help2man provides value. I am skeptical whether Debian-specific manpages provide value. Notably, Debian Policy does not use any words to describe what would make a manpage great. Therefore, by Debian Policy, the showtime manpage fully complies with Debian Policy, whereas gnome-clocks is in violation. I'm not sure that it's in Debian's scope to define what makes a manpage good. I don't think it is needed in Debian Policy or even in the Debian Developer Reference since those focus on packaging and the problem of poor manpages is an upstream cross-distro issue. I guess https://manpages.debian.org/man-pages might be the closest we have to a standard for manpages. Thank you, Jeremy Bícha
