Hi Ingo! On 7/22/22 18:59, Ingo Schwarze wrote: [...]
I considered[6] using man3type, and used man3 in the end just because when in doubt I opted for the smallest change. Knowing that it breaks mandoc(1), I'll definitely move to <man3type/>.I didn't mean to say man3/id_t.3type "breaks mandoc". Quite to the contrary, the above quotation explains that mandoc copes with it.
Yeah, I didn't mean break as in "mandoc(1) goes nuts, or crashes", but rather as in "it doesn't do what I wanted it to do".
However, when it comes to robustness with respect to *other* man(1) implementations apart from mandoc and man-db, i suspect the most portable and reliable way is using man1 - man9 only with no suffixes, consistent suffixes like "man3type/id_t.3type" are probably medium portability and medium reliability, and inconsistent suffixes like "man3/id_t.3type" and "man3type/id_t.3" are likely the least portable and the most fragile. So your change is an improvement.
:)
The system making the heaviest use of section suffixes i'm aware of is Solaris: > uname -a SunOS unstable11s 5.11 11.3 sun4u sparc SUNW,SPARC-Enterprise > ls /usr/share/man/ entities man3dat man3mvec man3sysevent man4b fr man3dax man3nsl man3tcl man5 fr.ISO8859-1 man3devid man3nvpair man3tecla man5oldap fr.UTF-8 man3devinfo man3oldap man3tiff man5openssl it man3dlpi man3openssl man3tsol man7 it.ISO8859-1 man3dns_sd man3p man3uuid man7d it.UTF-8 man3elf man3pam man3volmgt man7fs ja_JP.UTF-8 man3exacct man3pcap man3x man7i man-index man3ext man3perl man3x11 man7ipp man.cf man3f man3pi man3xau man7m man1 man3fcoe man3picl man3xaw man7openssl man1b man3fm man3picltree man3xcb man7p man1c man3fstyp man3plot man3xcomposite man8 man1m man3gen man3pool man3xcurses man8oldap man1oldap man3gss man3proc man3xcursor man8s man1openssl man3hbaapi man3project man3xevie man9 man1s man3head man3rad man3xext man9e man1t man3iscsit man3reparse man3xi man9f man2 man3kstat man3resolv man3xinerama man9p man3 man3kvm man3rpc man3xmu man9s man3archive man3layout man3sasl man3xnet pl man3c man3ldap man3scf man3xrandr pl.ISO8859-2 man3c_db man3lgrp man3sec man3xss pl.UTF-8 man3cc4 man3lib man3sip man3xt ru.KOI8-R man3cfgadm man3m man3slp man3xtsol ru.UTF-8 man3cmi man3mail man3snmp man3xtst zh_CN.UTF-8 man3commputil man3malloc man3socket man3xv man3contract man3mlib man3srpt man3xxf86vm man3cpc man3mp man3ssh2 man3zonestat man3curses man3mpapi man3stmf man4
Wow! Although it's interesting to know that this list exists: I can check it when trying to come up with a section name. I guess Illumos shares this subsectioning scheme.Do you know from the top of your head if any of those is dedicated to constants such as NULL, PATH_MAX, or BUFSIZ?
In my git clone of Illumos, I can't find anything relevant: alx@asus5775:~/src/illumos$ find | grep -i null | grep man ./illumos-gate/usr/src/man/man9f/nulldev.9f ./illumos-gate/usr/src/man/man4d/null.4d ./illumos-gate/usr/src/man/man4d/nulldriver.4d
Inside these directories, they are *mostly* using the convention "keep both section names consistent", so i do think that is good to follow. Even Solaris isn't perfect in that respect, though, they have, for example, /usr/share/man/man3cc4/cartpol.3 but on first sight, i only found about two dozen such examples.I fixed it: <https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/docs/man-pages/man-pages.git/commit/?id=451a27a78d51973b01bfb5d3b1e0ec081d9161e1>I did not scrutinize your change in detail, but had a brief look at it and did not see any obvious problems.And Debian seems to work fine with man3type/ and man2type/ out of the box, so I prefer it this way. I hope that other projects follow the example; and that packagers/distributions also create subsection directories, and don't undo my work.On Linux, undoing it would make very little sense to me because i expect that all man(1) programs commonly used on Linux can cope with section suffixes, and in particular with consistent use of session suffixes. Besides, undoing it properly is hardly possibly for a packager. If would require changing all these: - directory names
I actually make it as easy as I can to modify directory names in the Makefile through the standard GNU directory variables.
- file names
I don't expect them to change filenames, even if they change dirs. It wouldn't make sense at all.
- .TH macros
The same as fith file names. I expect them to want the pages to be in subsections, even if they wouldn't like the directory structure.
- and manual page cross references
That's a more difficult one. They would need to run a sed script for every release. A good reason to not modify it.
If they change dirs and don't change this, they'd break .so links.
So for better or worse, the only sane option for a packages is to follow your lead.
:) Cheers, Alex
Yours, Ingo
-- Alejandro Colomar <http://www.alejandro-colomar.es/>
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