Re: Hand-written manual pages for GNU coreutils

[Alejandro Colomar <alx@kernel.org>]

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Hi Pádraig,

On 2026-07-18T18:02:43+0100, Pádraig Brady wrote:
> On 18/07/2026 16:13, Alejandro Colomar wrote:
> > Hi!
> > 
> > I've started working on improving the quality of the manual pages for
> > coreutils, as I promised some time ago I'd do.  The work is --for the
> > moment-- in the 'coreutils' branch of the Linux man-pages repo.  Once
> > I finish, they won't be auto-generated from --help anymore.
> > 
> > <https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/docs/man-pages/man-pages.git/log/?h=coreutils>
> > 
> > We'll talk about incorporation to the coreutils.git repo later.
> 
> For reference, it was previously discussed at:https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/coreutils/2025-09/msg00151.html
> For clarifications on any details, please see the full documentation
> for any command at the link at the bottom of the coreutils man page.
> 
> E.g. `man vdir` references https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/vdir

The link doesn't work for me at the moment, but I've found the
differences between ls/dir/vdir here:
<https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/344222/341413>.

> 
> Also note that since v9.10 each coreutils man page has deep links
> from each option in the man page to the corresponding description
> in the full documentation.  That is something that could be maintained
> in any forked man pages.

Yup, I noticed that a moment ago.  I'll keep those links.  :)

I've done the initial import with this:

            $ dpkg -l coreutils \
                    | tail -n1;
            ii  coreutils      9.10-1devuan1 amd64        GNU core utilities
            $ apt-file show coreutils \
                    | grep man1/ \
                    | cut -f2 -d' ' \
                    | xargs -I{} find {} -type f
                    | xargs cp -t man1/;
            $ apt-file show coreutils \
                    | grep man8/ \
                    | cut -f2 -d' ' \
                    | xargs -I{} find {} -type f
                    | xargs cp -t man8/;
            $ find man -type f \
                    | grep '\.gz$' \
                    | xargs gunzip;

It's 9.10, so I guess it has everything.  If there's any page that is
not available in Devuan, or there's any change in git that you haven't
released yet and want to include, just let me know.


Have a lovely day!
Alex

> cheers,
> Padraig

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

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