[GRLUG] Suse

[John-Thomas Richards]

On Mon, Nov 03, 2008 at 04:13:58PM -0500, Adam Tauno Williams wrote:
> > Does Ubuntu require man pages for its packages?  Debian does.  In fact,
> > the Debian developers write many of the man pages for the utilities/apps
> > for which the upstream does not provide them.  Does any other distro do
> > that?  (This is not intended to become a distro-flame-fest.)
> 
> I think this distro-centric way of looking at development is just
> incorrect.  Distributions are not the centers of Open Source
> development, they are merely a packaging (and possibly testing) layer.
> Which is what makes HOWTO-X-On-Debian/SUSE/RedHat/ etc... such a waste
> of people's effort.  Other than the trivial step of how you install the
> packages setting up XYZ on any of the mainstream distributions is the
> same process.  When documentation is maintained numerous places it
> becomes impossible to maintain;  if you want Samba docs, go to the Samba
> project, if you want Apache docs, go the Apache project, etc...
> everything else is almost out-of-date the minute it hits the disk.  If
> documentation for XYZ needs improvement/fixing, get in contact with the
> project, and fix the upstream docs;  I'm not aware of any
> remotely-mainstream project that is going to turn away documentation
> updates or volunteers.  The last thing the world needs is another
> unmaintained HOWTO/INTRO/etc... clogging up their google searches.  My
> only point was is that Ubuntu is probably the single largest
> contributor [at this point] to the documentation miasma .

It is not a distro-centric way of looking at development.  Debian writes
man pages because many upstream projects do not provide them.  I find
man pages very valuable.  Quick, what are the available options for
xchat?  I don't know, but `man xchat' tells me.  The xchat developers
did not provide this:

  This manual page was written for the Debian GNU/Linux distribution
  because the original program does not have a manual page.

Debian makes these man pages available to the upstream project, though
many do not accept them.  Thus, Debian is forced to maintain/provide
them for its users.

I agree there needs to be a more centralized repository of
documentation.  The developers of a project should maintain the
documentation for it.  I am simply lamenting the lack of man pages from
the upstream developers and am asking if any other distros make such an
issue out of it as does Debian.
-- 
john-thomas
------
As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the
demand.
Josh Billings