[Pkg-bazaar-maint] Bug#517494: Bug#517494: bzr-buildpackage: Does not have a useful manpage

[Ben Finney]

On 28-Feb-2009, James Westby wrote:
> I'm interested in why you feel providing a man page that points
> users to the preferred way to get the help for the tool is a bad
> thing?

Preferred by whom? The Debian operating system has a deliberate policy
of providing a manual page for every command, precisely so that there
is a *single* preferred place to get at the information that a manual
page provides for commands.

> I could auto-generate the man page from this help text, but that's
> frankly more work than I am willing to put in.

The manpage system is a standard interface to a standard set of
information about all commands on the system, as promised to users by
Debian policy. Maintaining a proper manpage for every command is,
frankly, part of the job that a package maintainer accepts.

> bzr provides a great help system, which I plan to improve
> bzr-builddeb's use of soon, and so I would prefer that users use
> that.

The bzr-specific help system continues to be useful and certainly
shouldn't go away. It is specific to that tool, though, and as such is
no substitute for a proper manpage as must be provided for every
command on the system.

-- 
 \        “When in doubt tell the truth. It will confound your enemies |
  `\   and astound your friends.” —Mark Twain, _Following the Equator_ |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney <ben at benfinney.id.au>
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