Bug#792624: Fwd: Fwd: Re: multiarch = same and different date-entries in generated man page of i32/i64

[David Bremner]

Roelof Berg <rberg at berg-solutions.de> writes:

> help2man 1.47.1 IS used. Next I will try as a workaround setting
>    export SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH = $(shell date -d "$$(dpkg-parsechangelog 
> --count 1 -SDate)" +%s)
> manually in debian/rules.

Not everyone agrees with me, but I think using help2man at build time
should be generally avoided. It's fragile (as you see) and the quality
of the resulting man pages is generally low. By the time you go through
all the trouble of getting it work right, you could have committed (and
improved by editing) a static man page originally generated with
help2man. The tradeoff is then somebody has to keep that man page up to
date.  And nroff is initially daunting to edit, although really man
pages are pretty simple documents.

Just an alternative path to think about for fixing the bug(s).

d