I'm man-pages and man package maintainer and I want to start to create some rules to man-pages to package guildelines. Man-pages are the most common documentation so it could be useful to have some rules for them too.
Statistic for fc11/fc12
- At first I want to find out the number of binaries from directories /bin, /sbin, /usr/sbin and /usr/bin which have no man-page.
From this numbers there could be generated some recommendations like: all binaries in ... directories should have man page.
Statistic about man-pages (generated from fc12 installation DVD content - 2400 rpms ) :
| directory | number of missing man-pages | number of binaries/scripts | percentage of missing man pages |
|---|---|---|---|
| /bin | 12 | 110 | 11% |
| /sbin | 50 | 326 | 15% |
| /usr/sbin | 125 | 431 | 29% |
| /usr/bin | 1270 | 2814 | 45% |
Statistic about man-pages (generated from fc11 installation DVD content - 2252 rpms ) :
| directory | number of missing man-pages | number of binaries/scripts | percentage of missing man pages |
|---|---|---|---|
| /bin | 14 | 108 | 13% |
| /sbin | 55 | 324 | 17% |
| /usr/sbin | 141 | 447 | 32% |
| /usr/bin | 1326 | 3149 | 42% |
Proposal
- For now(fc12) there have only 62 binaries/scripts in /bin and /sbin which have no man page. It about 14 percentage of all binaries/scripts. Since fedora 11 the number lower a bit. It see, for me to be good reasons to have some guidelines like:
"The binaries and scripts which are in /bin and /sbin directories should have man page which describes their behaviour."
Other ideas
- there could be done some other activities - add test for missing man-pages to rpmlint, add there some tool which will check options man-page declare and options which the tool accept or some spell checker. There could be also do a test which check whether the man-pages are in good path.
Links
MAN pages which exists in other places(draft) - https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/MAN_pages_which_exists_in_other_places(draft)