Hi there,
At 12:10 PM 4/3/00 +0200, Richard wrote:
>Rather, we didn't know. Also, so far, the installations have been in
>/usr/local/ssl, and we've left it to the users to set their $MANPATH
>right. It may be time to rethink that position :-).
It's not actually that critical to this discussion, but as a pedantic point
- on my system (at least) setting the $PATH to include /usr/local/ssl/bin
causes all the man-pages in /usr/local/ssl/man to get picked up, without
any $MANPATH entries. This could just be a feature of my installation or
something more generic, but it's worth noting because making the installed
binary(ies) visible in the PATH can automatically expose the man-pages too
(allowing any/all conflicts to have their day, whether you wanted them or
not).
>deraadt> I have no idea what to do about those. We don't even install the
>deraadt> extra commands yet (just openssl(1) so far) -- as they are now their
>
>I see another humongous man page coming.... eeep...
>
>deraadt> build a scaffolding containing multiple commands in one. I do not
>deraadt> think you're going to convince a lot of Unix vendors to ship with
all
>deraadt> those commands in /usr/bin.
>
>Uhmm, if you have looked at OpenSSL, you'll know there's only one
>program really, called "openssl", and the commands described in all
>those man pages are really subcommands to "openssl"...
The man-pages for the openssl (sub)commands could all be renamed, as
someone pointed out recently, to openssl_genrsa, openssl_ca, etc. I
personally prefer that anyway, irrespective of whatever conflicts there
might be because there is no command called "ca" so I don't think "man ca"
should be the way to get to documentation for the "openssl ca" subcommand.
If "man openssl" would be too big to contain the subcommands (which I think
it would), I think a naming convention like "openssl_<whatever>" would be
more desirable ... the "man openssl" page itself could of course explain
and illustrate this so that it's easy for novice users to work out how to
get to those individual man pages.
As for the function pages, and general catch-all API discussion pages, I
have no thoughts to contribute at all ... sorry. :-)
Cheers,
Geoff
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