[debhelper-devel] Bug#888397: debhelper: enhance dh_installdocs or add a helper to deduplicate files

[Andreas Beckmann]

Package: debhelper
Severity: wishlist

Hi,

doxygen (and probably other tools) may generate duplicate files,
e.g. as can be seen in this Lintian report:

X: opencl-clhpp-headers-doc: duplicate-files usr/share/doc/opencl-clhpp-headers/html/search/all_c.js usr/share/doc/opencl-clhpp-headers/html/search/functions_b.js
X: opencl-clhpp-headers-doc: duplicate-files usr/share/doc/opencl-clhpp-headers/html/search/all_10.js usr/share/doc/opencl-clhpp-headers/html/search/typedefs_4.js
X: opencl-clhpp-headers-doc: duplicate-files usr/share/doc/opencl-clhpp-headers/html/search/all_5.js usr/share/doc/opencl-clhpp-headers/html/search/typedefs_2.js

It would be nice if debhelper could provide some means to deduplicate
such files - either as a separate helper or integrated into
dh_installdocs (since I assume that could handle be the primary source
of automatically generated duplicate files).
Since these are generated duplicate files and from one version of the
generator to the next they may change, be renamed, be moved around, ...
the maintainer as a mere user of the generator should not really have
to care about these files - either by manually deduplicating or by
adding lintian overrides.


Andreas

PS: for opencl-clhpp-headers-doc I now deduplicate manually with a
call to hardlink ... works since the dupes are within the same
directory, otherwise lintian would complain about cross-directory
hardlinks