Re: [gentoo-dev] [RFC] New QA policy: Packages must not disable installing manpages via USE flags

[Roy Bamford]

On 2019.07.17 14:25, Michał Górny wrote:
> Hello,
>
> The QA team would like to introduce the following policy:
>
> """
> Packages must not disable installing manpages via USE flags (e.g.
> USE=man or USE=doc).  If upstream does not ship prebuilt manpages
> and building them requires additional dependencies, the maintainer
> should build them and ship along with the package.
> """
>
>
> Explanatory note:
>
> This applies to having USE flags that specifically control building
> manpages.  It obviously does not affect:
>
> a. USE flags that disable building both a program and its manpage
> (e.g.
> if USE=gui disables building gfrobnicate, not installing
> gfrobnicate(1)
> is correct),
>
> b. use of LINGUAS to control installed manpages.
>
>
> Rationale:
>
> Manpages are the basic form of user documentation on Gentoo Linux.
> Not
> installing them is harmful to our users.  On the other hand, requiring
> additional dependencies is inconvenient.  Therefore, packaging
> prebuilt
> manpages (whenever upstream doesn't do that already) is a good
> compromise that provides user with documentation without additional
> dependencies.
>
>
> What are your comments?
>
> --
> Best regards,
> Michał Górny
>
>

Michał,

This works on systems with plenty of resources.
I suspect very few arm users have man/doc/info pages installed.
FEATURES="noman nodoc noinfo" is less than ideal as everything 
is still built, so you pay the build time, but not installed.

Does anyone read documentation on embedded class hardware?
I know I don't. 

Personally, I don't build much on embedded hardware either but I'm 
aware of users that do.

I like to have the choice to not build documentation on low power
systems. Its a part of Gentoos flexibility that should not be removed.

-- 
Regards,

Roy Bamford
(Neddyseagoon) a member of
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