Subject: Re: hier(7) silent on pkg documentation
To: James K. Lowden <jklowden@schemamania.org>
From: Greg A. Woods <woods@weird.com>
List: tech-pkg
Date: 11/10/2003 15:36:52
[ On Friday, November 7, 2003 at 23:58:56 (-0500), James K. Lowden wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: hier(7) silent on pkg documentation
>
> Suppose the real directory name were $PREFIX/share/doc/.$PKGNAME (note
> '.'), and there were a symbolic name for humans (similar to .so names). 
> So
> (putatively):
> 
> $ ls -la /usr/pkg/share/doc/      
> ...
> drwxr-xr-x  2 root  wheel  512 Nov  7 23:13 .bash-2.04
> lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel   10 Nov  7 23:16 bash -> .bash-2.04

That's not a bad idea.

My (so-far un-voiced, I think) idea of how to deal with multiple
versions of packages without using pkg_views requires a "meta" package
of sorts to select the default version, and it would use such a symlink
for both documenation and binaries, though without the leading '.' for
binaries (since I at least want command-line completion to show me which
versions of a program are available :-)).  The leading dot would
cerainly help though for keeping down the clutter in share/doc.

> One thing that separates NetBSD from various Linuxa I've installed is that
> NetBSD takes its man pages seriously.  It's not unusual, as Tom Jones
> might say, to find on a Red Hat system man pages for uninstalled binaries,
> and binaries lacking man pages.  NetBSD rightly considers that a bug.  Man
> pages might be unfashionable in this DocBook age, but they're no less
> useful or handy.  

It's getting even better now that "makewhatis" is set up to be run by
/etc/weekly (and some might even want it run daily :-).

-- 
						Greg A. Woods

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