[Build-common-hackers] CDBS question: generating man pages

[Peter Eisentraut]

On Wednesday 27 May 2009 12:28:17 Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
> >> I'm getting a CDBS built package into shape, and it's missing a man
> >> page. I was going to write one in DocBook XML, but I can't find any
> >> info on using CDBS to generate the man page. Can you point me to any
> >> info on it?
> >
> > There is no generic rule for building manpages at the moment, but
> > indeed someone could create a class for it.
>
> ...or several classes.  There are multiple approaches to writing
> manpages, like txt2man, help2man, in addition to the docbook-xml
> approach drafted by Marc.

In general, that might more properly belong into the domain of debhelper.  For 
example, dh_installman could just as well accept .xml files and covert them 
before installing them.

The fact that there are half a dozen acceptable solutions will probably not 
lead this type of project to conclusion any time soon, however.  And then 
again, if you are going to write a man page specifically for Debian, you might 
as well write it in groff directly.  The additional indirection doesn't really 
buy you anything in many cases.