Needless man files?

[aragon]

Leaving out man-pages is forgivable, if unwise, but leaving out the License/Copying/Copyright files is illegal in most places.

<OFF TOPIC>
A big puppy problem, that needs to be solved in my opinion. I think it's based on puppies size paradigm, that we all want to build the smallest possible package.

But with the actual packaging-practice we would have (at least) one license document per package, what would be about ~ 18 kb per package if all packages were 'gpl'ed'. as nearly 50% of OSS (see link below) seem to be published under the GPL 2.0, that would be a waste...

a more puppy-like approach would be what some other distros do:

1. having a folder with the most-used licenses e.g.

Code: Select all

/usr/share/doc/licenses

licenses: http://www.blackducksoftware.com/oss/licenses#top20

2. on package building you symlink to the license if it exists, if not, include the license. maybe this step could be included in dir2pet, to ease of handling.

</OFF TOPIC>

aragon

[amigo]

my src2pkg program does it an even better way, I think. debian distributes binary packages which link to a common License file, but each package doesn't contain the file. src2pkg links to a common file but includes that common file in each package, so any package you download *will* contain the license so it is available even if the package is not installed and even if the *common-licenses* package is not installed. So, packages built this way would simply overwrite the common license each time with an identical copy.

[DMcCunney]

@technosaurus
Your man package needs groff, at least in Puppy 4.3.1

See if this helps.
______
Dennis

[auriza]

@Dennis
Thanks, I've used groff form devx package. It will useful in fresh installed Puppy.

@aragon
Good idea, sometimes we have to look outside to other distro for best solution.

@shinobar
Well, I never try it, because it seems that the content is in Japanese. But if you can use it well, that's good.

[shinobar]

it seems that the content is in Japanese.

The devx_431JPbeta2.sfs is i18n'ed. but it contains many japanese man pages and a little in english.
one of my point is the man pages and the pager can be provided by additional sfs files.

[auriza]

@shinobar
Oh, I see your point. So we just need to add separate *.sfs man pages. This is good to accompany the default Puppy installation.

And one more point: to conserve space, manpages must be compressed (gzip or bzip2). I think for unofficial PET packages, the manpages should be included if the size is relatively small.