[arch-dev-public] Man page symlinks

[Dan McGee]

On Dec 21, 2007 12:22 PM, Aaron Griffin <aaronmgriffin at gmail.com> wrote:
> Ok, Jan brought this up twice now and I want to flesh this out.
>
> This is in relation to the filesystem/bash upgrades.
>
> On Dec 20, 2007 4:01 AM, Jan de Groot <jan at jgc.homeip.net> wrote:
> > So what does this do when /usr/man/man3 is a directory with manpages
> > and /usr/man/man3 is a symlink to /usr/share/man/man3 in the new package?
> > Shouldn't we move /usr/man to /usr/share/man in pre_install and pre_upgrade?
>
> Firstly, I don't think we should have these symlinks in the filesystem
> package at all simply because /usr/man is not specified in the FHS
> anywhere. We should technically never have a /usr/man dir at the
> completion of this ideal.
> If a *package* installs it, fine.
>
> By unsetting MANPATH in /etc/profile, man looks up pages via
> /etc/man.conf which includes both of these directories.
>
> In addition, by using symlinks at all, we run into the
> potential-and-always-confusing-possibly-working symlink/dir
> replacement stuff in pacman.
>
> Additionally, moving the man pages isn't a good idea. makepkg will NOT
> move them anymore.
>
> So, here's what we're left with:
>
> * Newly built packages will install to /usr/share/man
> * man will search both /usr/man and /usr/share/man for man pages
> * pacman -Qo will provide us with packages which need a rebuild
>
> It allows us to phase in the FHS man pages, and not do it all in one
> big lump. Backwards compat and all that.
>
> Is this acceptable?

Exactly what I was thinking, well said. +1.

Reference bug, for those who haven't been following:
http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/8839

-Dan