From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from stravinsky.debian.org (stravinsky.debian.org [82.195.75.108]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by smtp.subspace.kernel.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 700F43A1E6D for ; Thu, 25 Dec 2025 19:06:49 +0000 (UTC) Authentication-Results: smtp.subspace.kernel.org; arc=none smtp.client-ip=82.195.75.108 ARC-Seal:i=1; a=rsa-sha256; d=subspace.kernel.org; s=arc-20240116; t=1766689611; cv=none; b=H2NeBcCntbAQecy3WDbmyjfb6Z1fFtZPVAFa2LSAewQPSiWdlSocrtB8P7nhqvCSV87Cq+3Zk3SQOWZwkigolB7osMWhIlSS5yEUf3KjXmtLFZiJqzNoKV6VXltOFoszaTr9wLNV5ZW5eAsucGv4vHDXdw+gSWQgzT7QCNwHXmE= ARC-Message-Signature:i=1; a=rsa-sha256; d=subspace.kernel.org; s=arc-20240116; t=1766689611; c=relaxed/simple; bh=yP/OYoQzTVELO5jAUpnwTenlcTD25r0ED5pKuCR+2wA=; h=From:To:Cc:Subject:In-Reply-To:References:Date:Message-ID: MIME-Version:Content-Type; b=ic8SwGuu7UBPfjDZ4SJGHECiv1hsr3jfSDosVYPe8HXVeKVjqsD42wyPYpopQ6V0IfnUW40qNGiJ8xTtbu8WOklOVsDurJYfxcsV2o2nNzX6iHvedNz+9cPHYORR3gzy2nKG/+D31Rdm1bjPQ0yT98Ij0O07dqW8AJU6stZ1HN4= ARC-Authentication-Results:i=1; smtp.subspace.kernel.org; dmarc=none (p=none dis=none) header.from=debian.org; spf=none smtp.mailfrom=debian.org; dkim=pass (2048-bit key) header.d=debian.org header.i=@debian.org header.b=OAVsTSha; arc=none smtp.client-ip=82.195.75.108 Authentication-Results: smtp.subspace.kernel.org; dmarc=none (p=none dis=none) header.from=debian.org Authentication-Results: smtp.subspace.kernel.org; spf=none smtp.mailfrom=debian.org Authentication-Results: smtp.subspace.kernel.org; dkim=pass (2048-bit key) header.d=debian.org header.i=@debian.org header.b="OAVsTSha" DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; q=dns/txt; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=debian.org; s=smtpauto.stravinsky; h=X-Debian-User:Content-Type:MIME-Version:Message-ID: Date:References:In-Reply-To:Subject:Cc:To:From:Reply-To: Content-Transfer-Encoding:Content-ID:Content-Description; bh=zTMMWNcDwQaUSOVjhWmCqYCyCv9WSsshJEmDfRLSxuQ=; b=OAVsTShaO67lXPVfRQQ8O0brXp 6XvUAAc5G4R0+TSOzj5lgCriX5KX0HKaNedcCXoA9mZ9eoMRA8yFVfcL5vT1bOcytkg3xr/gJi0ng LkK0VGHrnrECwSkCPH9OrUXb8falRVvjE6WPsR+OZweSJg7PRekTk4QUTz+mvINu2S3tO9PePQLQE Rpuicj/QveMFRmYsiPzM989CZGUbHWt7cB2CeNXqF3jYqD80abaYdp6e0WvrBr22y4H3S6zW4ZkXE qPaoWgZ+fI284jozGonpu0hwomvWQE8Hy/IeQkoTRtlhRnoWH27VZa4HMTKjgCiFKOzJSfV4bclnD fLa70c7Q==; Received: from authenticated user by stravinsky.debian.org with esmtpsa (TLS1.3:ECDHE_X25519__RSA_PSS_RSAE_SHA256__AES_256_GCM:256) (Exim 4.94.2) (envelope-from ) id 1vYqfX-008FbJ-CB; Thu, 25 Dec 2025 19:06:40 +0000 Received: by mithrandir.eyrie.org (Postfix, from userid 1000) id 3AC564B3805; Thu, 25 Dec 2025 11:06:34 -0800 (PST) From: Russ Allbery To: Alejandro Colomar Cc: debian-policy@lists.debian.org, "Dr. Tobias Quathamer" , linux-man@vger.kernel.org, Helge Kreutzmann , "G. Branden Robinson" , Colin Watson Subject: Re: Stop compressing manual pages In-Reply-To: (Alejandro Colomar's message of "Thu, 25 Dec 2025 15:15:03 +0100") Organization: The Eyrie References: User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Date: Thu, 25 Dec 2025 11:06:34 -0800 Message-ID: <87ms364c05.fsf@hope.eyrie.org> Precedence: bulk X-Mailing-List: linux-man@vger.kernel.org List-Id: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain X-Debian-User: rra Alejandro Colomar writes: > On Thu, Dec 25, 2025 at 02:47:33PM +0100, Dr. Tobias Quathamer wrote: >> Am 25.12.25 um 12:20 schrieb Alejandro Colomar: >>> Indeed, compressed manual pages are a pain to work with. You can't use >>> regular Unix tools to work with them. With uncompressed manual pages, >>> You can go to /usr/share/man, and run a pipe of programs to do a complex >>> search. With tools like zgrep(1) and zcat(1), you can do some stuff, >>> but not everything. [...] >> thanks for your bug report and the provided statistics. I haven't thought >> about this up until now, because it violates Debian Policy. Quoting from >> Section 12.1 >> (https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-docs.html#manual-pages): >> >> "Manual pages should be installed compressed using gzip -9." [...] > Yup, I'd like that policy to change. I've added debian-policy@ to this > mail (and also linux-man@). Colin, do you have an opinion on this as the man-db maintainer? The software you maintain is probably the primary consumer by a significant margin of the installed manual pages. The rationale in Debian for compressing documentation in general is for embedded systems and other small installations, and it applies to just about anything that can be safely compressed (manual pages are only one example). But this rule also predates such facilities as the nodoc build profile, and is several decades old and thus predates the growth in storage size even in small embedded environments that has significantly outpaced the size of text-adjacent documents. I would definitely want to get feedback from embedded folks before changing this rule, but at least at first glance it sounds like a reasonable request worth considering. -- Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org)