Packaging opencpn: what about the docs?

[Alec Leamas]

Dear list,

Still working w opencpn. There are two dependencies in the pipe: unarr
and wxcurl. unarr seems ok (?),  wxcurl is as of now a draft (but
available in the salasa repo). Will try to get the last dependency wxsvg
rolling.

As for opencpn, the documentation is a problem. The package contains a
html manual which triggers lintian diagnostics, the most significant is
a E: source-is-missing and a companion
insane-line-length-in-source-file. There are also some js-related
warnings, probably not that hard to patch.

It all stems from the fact that the documentation is generated from a
wiki site. This process is not really open to the regular open-source
workflow since the site's sources are not available.

I have raised the issue at upstream [1]. The conclusion is that the wiki
source will not be available in some public space. As I see it, it
leaves me with some alternatives, none of which really attractive.

  - Accept the situation, package the docs and override the lintian
warnings. Obviously, many packages does this [2]

  - Skip packaging the docs, and have users downloading them from
opencpn website. Note that opencpn users possibly are sailing with slow
or no internet connection...

  - Try to use the new docs published in epub format. This will probably
not generate any lintian diagnostics, but the underlying problem is the
same (but perhaps editing the epub format is easier?)

Thoughts?

--alec

[1] https://github.com/OpenCPN/OpenCPN/issues/1131
[2] https://lintian.debian.org/tags/source-is-missing.html