Re: [PATCH 0/7] Improve support for compressed man pages

[Mike Frysinger <vapier-aBrp7R+bbdUdnm+yROfE0A@public.gmane.org>]

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On 18 Apr 2016 19:10, Alexander Miller wrote:
> On Mon, 18 Apr 2016 13:57:54 +0100 Michael Kerrisk wrote:
> > On 04/16/2016 05:30 PM, Alexander Miller wrote:
> > > On Sat, 16 Apr 2016 00:50:58 -0400
> > > Mike Frysinger <vapier-aBrp7R+bbdUdnm+yROfE0A@public.gmane.org> wrote:
> > >   
> > >> imo, we should just drop all compression support.  distros already
> > >> handle this properly and pick whatever they want/need.  
> > > 
> [...]
> > > 
> > > We can drop compression support or do it right - I'm fine with
> > > either option. We shouldn't keep the status quo, though.  
> > 
> > I'm inclined to say drop it. Would you mind putting together a 
> > patch, Alex?
> 
> I'm not sure what exactly we should do.
> The problem isn't really compressing the files, but the "screen"
> and "uninstall" targets.
> 
> If we drop support for compressing man pages ourselves, what shall
> we do with those targets? They aren't useful for distros either.
> And they *still* might have to deal with files compressed by the
> distro's package manager (if a user tries to update manually).
> We could
> - drop "screen" and/or "uninstall", too
>   (getting rid of the problem and simplifying the Makefile but
>   being inconvenient for users);
> - fix them to handle man pages compressed by the distro
>   (but not compressed sources, resulting in only slightly simpler
>   patches than those I've posted);
> - or explicitly state "screen" (and maybe "uninstall") don't support
>   compressed files. This is problematic IMO, especially since they
>   are used by "make all". Moreover, "uninstall" can remove .gz/.bz2
>   files but no .xz files right now; this could be changed to include
>   .xz or to exclude .gz/.bz2.

imo, drop the screen target.  for uninstall, that's a semi-common
idiom that packages have (and autotools supports out of the box).
keeping that sounds fine.

i don't think we need to worry about supporting `make uninstall` if
the package was installed initially by the distro -- you have to deal
with version skew of course which pretty much no one does.  just make
sure `make install && make uninstall` works sanely.

wrt compression, we could be lazy/greedy here too.  when we uninstall
locale.5, just rm locale.5*.  in practice, this is unlikely to be an
issue ...
-mike

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