[debhelper-devel] Bug#865707: debhelper: Please support DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=nodoc

[Robert Luberda]

Package: debhelper
Version: 10.2.5
Severity: wishlist

The Debian Policy has recently introduced DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=nodoc. 
I've just tried to handle it in one of my packages, namely afterstep,
but it quickly turned out that if the documentation files are not
generated, then dh_install fails because it still trying to install 
them. Fortunatelly my debian/*.install and other debhelper files are 
generated, so I can easily filter /usr/share/{doc,man} out of them,
but then dh_installwm fails due to missing man page.

Could you please add support for DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS=nodoc into debhelper,
so that it will not try to install anything into /usr/share/doc (except
copyright, changelog, and maybe NEWS.Debian), and /usr/share/man? Also
it should not install doc-base files either for obvious reason.

I think this will require changes at least in dh_install, dh_installdoc,
dh_installman, dh_installwm.

(The Policy says in section 4.9.1 that the `nodoc' option should cause build 
process to skip generation of documentation files, like man pages, API 
documentation, etc. This probably means that the non-generated documentation 
can be sill installed, however I am not sure if debhelper will be able to 
distinguish between generated and non-generated doc files on its own, 
that's why I think that debhelper in the `nodoc' mode should simply avoid 
installing any documentation).


Regards,
robert

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 9.0
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (990, 'unstable'), (990, 'testing'), (990, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 4.9.0-3-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=pl_PL.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=pl_PL.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=pl_PL.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)

Versions of packages debhelper depends on:
ii  autotools-dev            20161112.1
ii  binutils                 2.28-6
ii  dh-autoreconf            14
ii  dh-strip-nondeterminism  0.035-2
ii  dpkg                     1.18.24
ii  dpkg-dev                 1.18.24
ii  file                     1:5.30-1
ii  libdpkg-perl             1.18.24
ii  man-db                   2.7.6.1-2
ii  perl                     5.24.1-4
ii  po-debconf               1.0.20

debhelper recommends no packages.

Versions of packages debhelper suggests:
pn  dh-make  <none>

-- no debconf information