Hi Florian,

On Thu September 3 2009 12:36:13 Florian Schlichting wrote:
> Hi,
>
> the -C (or --compare) option is currently not mentioned in the info
> documentation, and in man page it reads:
>
>     compare each pair of source and destination files, and
>     in some cases, do not modify the destination at all

thanks for pointing this out! As for the missing info documentation, it's ugly 
bug. A hunk of doc/coreutils.texi was misplaced somehow (lack of caffeine, who 
knows...). The attached patch fixes it.

> That's not very specific, making -C effectively unuseable. I found a
> nice description of what it does on this list, written by Kamil Dudka
> (http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-coreutils/2009-01/msg00122.html):
>
>     With this option install checks an existing destination file and if it
>     is not different (by content, owner, group and mode) from source, the
>     file is not installed. Preserving destination's original mtime can
>     significantly decrease time of building when a system library is
>     reinstalled but the header files are not changed at all.
>
> IMHO this is adequate for the info documentation. For the shorter
> manpage, the description could be changed to read:
>
>     compare each pair of source and destination files, and
>     if identical (by content, ownership and mode), do not
>     copy to preserve mtime

As for wording/reviewing the documentation text, we need to ask someone else. 
My English is not good enough to write documentation...

Kamil
From a9bc3fc5e15672ac364dccd827265d3cc9d1aa14 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Kamil Dudka <[email protected]>
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 2009 14:08:27 +0200
Subject: [PATCH] install -C: fix bug in the texi documentation

* doc/coreutils.texi: Move the documentation for install --compare (-C)
option to the right place.
---
 doc/coreutils.texi |   16 ++++++++--------
 1 files changed, 8 insertions(+), 8 deletions(-)

diff --git a/doc/coreutils.texi b/doc/coreutils.texi
index 33877af..86394a1 100644
--- a/doc/coreutils.texi
+++ b/doc/coreutils.texi
@@ -2122,14 +2122,6 @@ The program accepts the following options.  Also see @ref{Common options}.
 
 @table @samp
 
-...@item -C
-...@itemx --compare
-...@opindex -C
-...@opindex --compare
-Compare each pair of source and destination files, and if the destination has
-identical content and any specified owner, group, permissions, and possibly
-SELinux context, then do not modify the destination at all.
-
 @item -c
 @itemx --crown-margin
 @opindex -c
@@ -8072,6 +8064,14 @@ The program accepts the following options.  Also see @ref{Common options}.
 
 @optBackup
 
+...@item -C
+...@itemx --compare
+...@opindex -C
+...@opindex --compare
+Compare each pair of source and destination files, and if the destination has
+identical content and any specified owner, group, permissions, and possibly
+SELinux context, then do not modify the destination at all.
+
 @item -c
 @opindex -c
 Ignored; for compatibility with old Unix versions of @command{install}.
-- 
1.6.2.5

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