Hi Nilesh, On 2020-12-20 15:10, Nilesh Patra wrote: > As a result, I was wondering if there might be some way to automate this > bit, or alternatively, use help2man during build time itself and nuke > d/createmanpages and d/*.1 as a workaround. > And hence, maybe it is a good idea to standardize one practice across > team to avoid such delta in manpage with versions? > > Please let me know what you'd think is the best way forward.
Thanks for opportunity to discuss this. I myself enjoy fully automated build time solutions (like help2man) the most, as this way manpages are kept up-to-date with no cost at all. However, build time solutions have their own disadvantages: 1. Unusable for arch:any programs, as they may be cross-built. 2. Requires Build-Depends containing binary Depends, but this is usually cheap. I would really recommend using help2man for arch:all binary packages, but d/createmanpages approach seems inevitable for arch:any. Maybe there is a way to forbid cross-builds, but I am not sure manpages are worth it. Maybe the tooling could be improved to make it more difficult to forget rebuilding d/*.1? For example, lintian warning/error reporting that timestamps of d/*.1 are older than the newest upstream release? I think such approach would be general enough. Best, Andrius
