On Fri, 2010-08-27 at 10:16 -0700, Russ Allbery wrote: > Andrew McMillan <and...@morphoss.com> writes: > > > My personal preference would be to encourage -doc packages to install > > their files into /usr/share/doc/<package>/docs - including their > > internal administrivia. > > That would break Lintian, apt-listchanges, probably the DAK processing > scripts, and anything else that looks at copyright and changelog in binary > packages. I don't think it's worth it to make that change. > > > While this is not current practice, I'm not convinced that current > > practice has evolved into what was suggested in 2003 either. > > Right now, I'm seeing a real mix of behavior, with some packages > installing all the documentation into the -doc package's /usr/share/doc > (probably in part because that's easier) and others installing it into the > parent package, some with symlinks and some without. As a result, right > now one cannot easily find the documentation in any standardized place. > > > I also remember as a user hunting for these documents the first time or > > two when I had installed the -doc package and it slowly dawning on me > > that they weren't anywhere in /usr/share/doc/<package>, and I think that > > breaks the principal of least surprise, for everyone except long-time, > > hard-core Debianista. > > Yeah, that's what Ben's writeup would fix, and I agree that's worth > fixing. > > > Those points are justifications for both proposals, of course, and I > > guess that one reason for retaining the administrivia > > in /usr/share/doc/<package>-doc might be that there are tools that > > expect to find it there. Is that the case? > > Yup. > > > I don't think I ever do more than refer to them by hand, and either > > proposed change can probably be codified in some small number of > > scripts. > > I don't think the change proposed here requires changing any scripts, > although it will require changing a bunch of packages (and a change to > debhelper to make it easier to install docs into the right place would be > useful).
In that case I support changing it the way Ben proposes. I can
certainly see the value of standardising it, and doing it this way
definitely improves the situation.
Cheers,
Andrew.
--
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andrew (AT) morphoss (DOT) com +64(272)DEBIAN
I'll burn my books.
-- Christopher Marlowe
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