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 40E0F13D539 for ; Mon, 20 Apr 2026 10:14:59 +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=1776680100; cv=none; b=nJE8Okb5Lhdq53u7Cy3NYBzROUmrPcyKdGP0TwZWYCxK6B5nwW3CSMpMw4jsjQlGS0GUIwAddKCmIXMXC9x3uB7mFntp01u6xu4R4iX6ARriikYMBC/gzcCD+1UfUM6qVs/9hFG6CV6MVvmTRHhm7HR+ln46NksEtUF+CbQSvKw= ARC-Message-Signature:i=1; a=rsa-sha256; d=subspace.kernel.org; s=arc-20240116; t=1776680100; c=relaxed/simple; bh=IU8mn6EfGBoEjBk1txI8xGFdUNtX2/Njo+AOR/VTGTM=; h=Date:From:To:Cc:Subject:Message-ID:References:MIME-Version: Content-Type:Content-Disposition:In-Reply-To; b=JuF/+3D+5RyJQ8TGVtkO9czhDMF0ykJIlpkpcw26RTFhoECUe9CblYltwRfphx4ZvfYisxPSyH3J56jJX2R52ZlI7OFkoJN0lNH3O6fi46FC7B37QTy/+zbk9y/A1u18s0/Ju5tOtLB5mwVVJNRa6z5Rxflm1iqTZPOsU/tGWu0= 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=NZjG+EJS; 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="NZjG+EJS" DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; q=dns/txt; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=debian.org; s=smtpauto.stravinsky; h=X-Debian-User:In-Reply-To:Content-Type:MIME-Version: References:Message-ID:Subject:Cc:To:From:Date:Reply-To: Content-Transfer-Encoding:Content-ID:Content-Description; bh=hBLw9Zd0fXFmrIF4mfXt2Xca5E0kP7RsXaYNcZZvvEM=; b=NZjG+EJSj/K/6l4P+z/BHqgKa6 2AgbAWlxeoCxG6XDVPrp/6L8GG/i/uOdE3KXhGBLPZr4f5O1v51JWPNxylGRhDwswGFSkLPR7/FpM aYBkFS3QPaSA+lN5eRepWssCLxxzXDEF/a35C4UQh8s+/Sbn5vIzlTE+NwwK2NWbJRTtZXkED2WkG vF0vOis9d/NOH1TIbYyyC7yf/Vxie7nhNfnop7GKaXlQgNRcr/Olr2NKabAnFcLNiUsw2a5rhsfUe phozDb6jDGMhBJdTEL/avXv8Jc8frO//dMomdXKyJmphetKnlB9hQHqcd7urLmjpW8p6Lh/9b8J9V zUGh6QYw==; Received: from authenticated user by stravinsky.debian.org with esmtpsa (TLS1.3:ECDHE_SECP256R1__RSA_PSS_RSAE_SHA256__AES_256_GCM:256) (Exim 4.96) (envelope-from ) id 1wEleZ-0000rE-2h; Mon, 20 Apr 2026 10:14:56 +0000 Received: from ns1.rosewood.vpn.ucam.org ([172.20.153.2] helo=riva.ucam.org) by riva.rosewood.vpn.ucam.org with esmtps (TLS1.3) tls TLS_ECDHE_RSA_WITH_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 (Exim 4.98.2) (envelope-from ) id 1wEleX-00000003X85-1e53; Mon, 20 Apr 2026 11:14:53 +0100 Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2026 11:14:52 +0100 From: Colin Watson To: Russ Allbery Cc: Alejandro Colomar , 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: Mail-Followup-To: Russ Allbery , Alejandro Colomar , debian-policy@lists.debian.org, "Dr. Tobias Quathamer" , linux-man@vger.kernel.org, Helge Kreutzmann , "G. Branden Robinson" 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: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <87ms364c05.fsf@hope.eyrie.org> X-Debian-User: cjwatson On Thu, Dec 25, 2025 at 11:06:34AM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote: > Alejandro Colomar writes: > > On Thu, Dec 25, 2025 at 02:47:33PM +0100, Dr. Tobias Quathamer wrote: > >> 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. Sorry for being slow to reply to this. It's not something I feel as strongly about as Alejandro: in man-db we've already paid most of the costs (in terms of software complexity) of making compressed manual pages work well, and we'll have to keep that code around for the foreseeable future no matter what. But it's true that there are continuing annoyances with ad-hoc shell pipelines. Let's put it this way: as man-db maintainer, I have no objection to recommending uncompressed manual pages. Sort of +0 or +0.5. I definitely agree that embedded folks ought to be consulted, if they aren't already simply excluding manual pages entirely. -- Colin Watson (he/him) [cjwatson@debian.org]