From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from smtp.kernel.org (aws-us-west-2-korg-mail-1.web.codeaurora.org [10.30.226.201]) (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 014B6288530 for ; Sun, 19 Apr 2026 06:51:07 +0000 (UTC) Authentication-Results: smtp.subspace.kernel.org; arc=none smtp.client-ip=10.30.226.201 ARC-Seal:i=1; a=rsa-sha256; d=subspace.kernel.org; s=arc-20240116; t=1776581468; cv=none; b=OMIJe0p01ikjz1edgPQpdVOrGMzowUZ7VB5uIx0IcJB0yaC6mP5N6/OwotHJ7M+lVLaj0p44DjfBwlr2a8+9Z4zMwPH6bOz5rX452pBuh7eD9tGr4WKJ5OpIHiFCIf2uqUCtu9ARVn3ATTQZNOnboo3BwSP9FlKkxW41nVD8N7A= ARC-Message-Signature:i=1; a=rsa-sha256; d=subspace.kernel.org; s=arc-20240116; t=1776581468; c=relaxed/simple; bh=CUI3VZCCniWE7sxEVcnlxuSHydvsCb+DXwgS7IVQ0sE=; h=Date:From:To:Cc:Subject:Message-ID:References:MIME-Version: Content-Type:Content-Disposition:In-Reply-To; b=Uf7+L3xBbyTSTVV99bLzbIDhe/afhu3F1UmVnKp6TG4uEFnxHnfB7iBc2vj80cDprsxUNyFobwGhsWNVsIe94SdsdJDajSuhlQMG+BZwvnGvxrobGA/vzhEke7gAQtRMnT2hxjs3NaVabHfu1PZW6o8Dlf2n6zpqzrQKbcyUhF8= ARC-Authentication-Results:i=1; smtp.subspace.kernel.org; dkim=pass (2048-bit key) header.d=kernel.org header.i=@kernel.org header.b=Ol5DL8Od; arc=none smtp.client-ip=10.30.226.201 Authentication-Results: smtp.subspace.kernel.org; dkim=pass (2048-bit key) header.d=kernel.org header.i=@kernel.org header.b="Ol5DL8Od" Received: by smtp.kernel.org (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 4C4E1C2BCAF; Sun, 19 Apr 2026 06:51:06 +0000 (UTC) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/simple; d=kernel.org; s=k20201202; t=1776581467; bh=CUI3VZCCniWE7sxEVcnlxuSHydvsCb+DXwgS7IVQ0sE=; h=Date:From:To:Cc:Subject:References:In-Reply-To:From; b=Ol5DL8OdvYupLfqGmyVUEWDzfSRUnRAwdaBSggMH0OCcOMvbfJub6txtJxwCiUmDX eG1lS3era2NskajA3WJ76tC2KLpbuy4zNIZ8Yvf2e52byMGunleUX5NvdvPBnKeEv1 gpGbAXFL/ho5Aqzy6CxleLCj9E+P5/4cnG78K/COWqzCs38iMTX140wkmumuWA07th 2f0FGPDOKfJxcm4Ug8KmJ8J5yQfCihTjlnaAH+1RdgGqb51dj6C0rMHuIf/ecBktIn qbvqJtq9pjXvGW9K/7Uxa2Or+RUq8IVyhBMPfkJH3T6txqGiagLaqLwqyU3pwWeTYX jAIKEfj+ICh4w== Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2026 08:51:03 +0200 From: Alejandro Colomar To: Colin Watson , Russ Allbery Cc: debian-policy@lists.debian.org, "Dr. Tobias Quathamer" , linux-man@vger.kernel.org, Helge Kreutzmann , "G. Branden Robinson" Subject: Re: Stop compressing manual pages Message-ID: References: <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: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-sha512; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="3fsu3xzvpf52kcko" Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <87ms364c05.fsf@hope.eyrie.org> --3fsu3xzvpf52kcko Content-Type: text/plain; protected-headers=v1; charset=utf-8 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable From: Alejandro Colomar To: Colin Watson , Russ Allbery Cc: debian-policy@lists.debian.org, "Dr. Tobias Quathamer" , linux-man@vger.kernel.org, Helge Kreutzmann , "G. Branden Robinson" Subject: Re: Stop compressing manual pages Message-ID: References: <87ms364c05.fsf@hope.eyrie.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <87ms364c05.fsf@hope.eyrie.org> Hi Colin, On 2025-12-25T11:06:34-0800, Russ Allbery wrote: > 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: >=20 > >>> Indeed, compressed manual pages are a pain to work with. You can't u= se > >>> 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 comp= lex > >>> search. With tools like zgrep(1) and zcat(1), you can do some stuff, > >>> but not everything. >=20 > [...] >=20 > >> thanks for your bug report and the provided statistics. I haven't thou= ght > >> about this up until now, because it violates Debian Policy. Quoting fr= om > >> Section 12.1 > >> (https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-docs.html#manual-pages): > >>=20 > >> "Manual pages should be installed compressed using gzip -9." >=20 > [...] >=20 > > Yup, I'd like that policy to change. I've added debian-policy@ to this > > mail (and also linux-man@). >=20 > 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. Ping. Have a lovely day! Alex >=20 > 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. >=20 > --=20 > Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) --=20 --3fsu3xzvpf52kcko Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name="signature.asc" -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- iQIzBAABCgAdFiEES7Jt9u9GbmlWADAi64mZXMKQwqkFAmnke1cACgkQ64mZXMKQ wqniXxAAvU17Ca0tk5wGwBuGxTrIe1aiJslm4EXqb0PKipUF804DMiZbsV2Xd70b kKbzWXUYr1DqvckHrbFoytTuJ7BVON4ks/5G/37x5Pe3TDsDJra0t2ijaKCXVvaz AtNhVVK2cUPTKl6TmlcCDb/LYEbqZD1aa99JMzZXPtEQS4CloEFUn36AbUDaerfS TKwh5BFN3Jp1Gx2PI4/UV//s5ov/w998G2HQyWvgrGH+ZqpMlFDGKzzpSbIk3nFw maRMxuvfbP8r1hQDSxDWbuEX/4o2jWwlrbjcpWo6aYIWizt2EcjgjKhiKgJ+4vyJ nlhldLzYZC8bNGGQEm+B5U21ZhkwsZV5zUKe6sOqavDxNwqNX+XzFuiUM6GX0rUj 7g49cVe2NJHC1eELQTyICWN/n+qPK8O5fkDfVkiZ+kvIr1kBREEbzJfcX1O2ZGQs hwE2+wVCl9GGSMNgwbKVtrXEB13aMzD8cO4aAgYTqxYYewRSQx+Ti6RPSTTp2fD7 VfQJ7rG1jZ+/XbmvS7vrtwxOc2UkzKJsfbl+Jj6zygD8FriCKh9ejHGOYhqJZXxY k5WaDA1UXWZunr4DIH/6ZZ8wmeGbVnaQJqO2ZWy0IKuiW2T8pQOY3V31rvCE/+Pt d7+zb8RHa5SebjiwxAvoQIq/7nNUn+M8qQxhF/pULhHC9vPE5co= =+nYt -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --3fsu3xzvpf52kcko--