Re: man/man8/ldconfig.8: document system-wide tunables

[Alejandro Colomar <alx@kernel.org>]

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Hi DJ,

On 2026-07-15T17:46:47-0400, DJ Delorie wrote:
> Alejandro Colomar <alx@kernel.org> writes:
> > I find it easier to write documentation in man(7) than in any other
> > languages.  It's simple enough that I don't need to remember much.
> 
> I can say the same for HTML, because I'm used to it and I stick to
> simple constructs.  It's good that there are people who find man(7)
> easy, and it's good that those people have found a way to contribute
> using their expertese.  I.e. Thank You :-)

Thanks!  :-)

> >> I've always advocated for "whatever system means the docs are stored and
> >> edited with the code, that I can turn into whatever I need."

[...]
> I mean "anything that means one commit has code change and doc change".
> I don't care about the mechanism.  Do it either way as long as you do
> something.

I see; that makes sense.  In general, I agree; in this specific case,
I prefer it split, for other reasons, but yep.

> > You're welcome to send the patches well before they're merged in glibc.
> 
> Er, I've been working on tunables for about 3-4 years now.  I doubt
> you'd want to hold on to a patch set that long.

I would be happy to review a patch until it's fine, discard it locally,
and let you re-send it in 4 years (bonus points if it's In-Reply-To the
original one, so I can keep track of the history easily).

> In this case, the timing was poor - it finished up just before a release
> cycle, so whether the man pages needed to be done now or in six months
> was not known until the last minute.  The time from glibc freeze to
> glibc release is plenty long enough for a man page review cycle, though.

Ok.

> > For the tests in the build system, I use MANWIDTH=80,
> > precisely to maintain a consistent width that is the most common one.
> 
> I don't think I've had a default with of 80 for a couple decades now.  I
> wish we'd standardized on the 132-column terminals instead.

I have a big screen, and when I switched to it, I thought I could use
more columns.  What ended up happening is that I've increased the font
size to keep my eyes healthy.  :D

If I split my screen in two (which I often do), the terminal has 88
columns.  Considering that I enable column numbers in vim(1), I still
get to use around 80 columns for actual work.

> > So, it's at least as old as 1994.  :)
> 
> Um, my career predates that too.  I don't think I was doing man pages
> back then, though.

Heh!


Cheers,
Alex

-- 
<https://www.alejandro-colomar.es>

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