Bug#630779: perl: wrong default installsite path for man pages

[Vincent Lefevre]

On 2011-08-20 16:31:00 +0100, Dominic Hargreaves wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 17, 2011 at 11:39:24AM +0200, Vincent Lefevre wrote:
> [ExtUtils::MakeMaker Makefiles]
> 
> > The INSTALLSITE* variables are incorrect:
> > 
> > INSTALLSITEMAN1DIR = $(SITEPREFIX)/man/man1
> > INSTALLSITEMAN3DIR = $(SITEPREFIX)/man/man3
> > 
> > They should be:
> > 
> > INSTALLSITEMAN1DIR = $(SITEPREFIX)/share/man/man1
> > INSTALLSITEMAN3DIR = $(SITEPREFIX)/share/man/man3
> > 
> > (with "share") to be consistent with other tools, such as the
> > autotools.
> > 
> > Similarly,
> > 
> > $ perl '-V:install.*man.*'
> > installman1dir='/usr/share/man/man1';
> > installman3dir='/usr/share/man/man3';
> > installsiteman1dir='/usr/local/man/man1';
> > installsiteman3dir='/usr/local/man/man3';
> > installvendorman1dir='/usr/share/man/man1';
> > installvendorman3dir='/usr/share/man/man3';
> > 
> > though this isn't really an error since the FHS says that
> > "/usr/local/share/man and /usr/local/man directories must
> > be synonomous".
> 
> It's not clear whether your last comment is intended to refer to both
> examples you give, although I don't see why it shouldn't apply to both.

My last comment refers only to the second example. AFAIK, the FHS
says nothing like that for the other prefixes. /usr/local is a
standard prefix, so that the symlink could be added when the system
is installed. But this is not true for other prefixes like the user's
home directory.

Moreover /usr/local/man exists just for historical reasons, and
using /usr/local/share/man is better anyway.

http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html#FTN.AEN1530 says:

  /usr/local/man may be deprecated in future FHS releases, so if
  all else is equal, making that one a symlink seems sensible.

-- 
Vincent Lefèvre <vincent at vinc17.net> - Web: <http://www.vinc17.net/>
100% accessible validated (X)HTML - Blog: <http://www.vinc17.net/blog/>
Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / Arénaire project (LIP, ENS-Lyon)