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Re: Debian man pages have annoying feature(sic)

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On Sat, May 30, 2020 at 04:52:47AM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:
> I the recent thread about returning a Debian installation to its
> original state "popularity-contest" was mentioned.
> 
> I wished to compare it to other tools mentioned in that thread.
> Obvious stating point -- read the man page.
> As I never installed its package I went to https://manpages.debian.org/buster/popularity-contest/popularity-contest.8.en.html
> .
> 
> It did not explicitly answer my question.
> However, under "SEE ALSO" it stated:
> >Additional documentation is in /usr/share/doc/popularity-contest/.
> 
> *PROBLEM*
> As package is not installed, that directory does *NOT* exist.
> 
> Where to find required documentation on the web?
> 
> NOTE BENE
> This post is about man pages as a class.

Of course, it would be nice to have everything in the man page.
That is in general difficult, since upstream doesn't always
do it this way -- packaging isn't the place to change that.

That said, it's possible to browse Debian packages sources
in the 'net.

I'll show how to do it based on your concrete example.

First, the structure of a source package doesn't correspond
to the installed binary package; the reference given in the
above "SEE ALSO" is relative to the binary package. So first
you have a look at popularity-contest's "list of files", that's
in <https://packages.debian.org/> (I'm assuming buster):

  https://packages.debian.org/buster/all/popularity-contest/filelist

(Of course you can click your way through to this URL).

You can see that in /usr/share/doc/... there is a FAQ, a README,
a changelog, a copyright and a subdirectory examples.

Now you go to the corresponding place in <https://sources.debian.org/>:

  https://sources.debian.org/src/popularity-contest/1.67/

There they are: FAQ, README and examples (the two missing ones
are Debian infrastructure and live in the subdir debian).

Note that it won't work this way always and 100%, because
package installation /might/ do some magic, which you may
look up in debian/rules, debian/postinst, etc. -- but that's
it, more or less.

Enjoy
-- tomás

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Thread

Debian man pages have annoying feature(sic) Richard Owlett <rowlett@cloud85.net> - 2020-05-30 12:00 +0200
  Re: Debian man pages have annoying feature(sic) <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2020-05-30 13:00 +0200
    Re: Debian man pages have annoying feature(sic) Richard Owlett <rowlett@cloud85.net> - 2020-05-30 15:40 +0200
  Re: Debian man pages have annoying feature(sic) Richard Owlett <rowlett@cloud85.net> - 2020-05-30 15:50 +0200
    Re: Debian man pages have annoying feature(sic) The Wanderer <wanderer@fastmail.fm> - 2020-05-30 16:20 +0200
  Re: Debian man pages have annoying feature(sic) l0f4r0@tuta.io - 2020-05-30 16:20 +0200
    Re: Debian man pages have annoying feature(sic) <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2020-05-30 17:00 +0200
      Re: Debian man pages have annoying feature(sic) Richard Owlett <rowlett@cloud85.net> - 2020-05-30 17:10 +0200
        Re: Debian man pages have annoying feature(sic) David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2020-05-30 23:10 +0200
          Re: Debian man pages have annoying feature(sic) Andrei POPESCU <andreimpopescu@gmail.com> - 2020-06-01 09:00 +0200
          Re: Debian man pages have annoying feature(sic) Richard Owlett <rowlett@cloud85.net> - 2020-06-02 13:20 +0200
            Re: Debian man pages have annoying feature(sic) Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> - 2020-06-02 16:40 +0200
            Re: Debian man pages have annoying feature(sic) David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2020-06-02 17:10 +0200
  Re: Debian man pages have annoying feature(sic) Andrei POPESCU <andreimpopescu@gmail.com> - 2020-05-30 16:50 +0200
  Re: Debian man pages have annoying feature(sic) Ralph Katz <ralph@ralphkatz.com> - 2020-06-01 23:20 +0200
    Re: Debian man pages have annoying feature(sic) Richard Owlett <rowlett@cloud85.net> - 2020-06-02 00:10 +0200
      Re: Debian man pages have annoying feature(sic) Bob Weber <bobrweber@gmail.com> - 2020-06-02 00:30 +0200
      Re: Debian man pages have annoying feature(sic) l0f4r0@tuta.io - 2020-06-02 01:00 +0200
      Something is buggy - was [Re: Debian man pages have annoying  feature(sic)] Richard Owlett <rowlett@cloud85.net> - 2020-06-02 15:10 +0200
        Re: Something is buggy - was [Re: Debian man pages have annoying  feature(sic)] The Wanderer <wanderer@fastmail.fm> - 2020-06-02 15:50 +0200
          Re: Something is buggy - was [Re: Debian man pages have annoying  feature(sic)] Richard Owlett <rowlett@cloud85.net> - 2020-06-02 17:50 +0200
            Re: Something is buggy - was [Re: Debian man pages have annoying  feature(sic)] Andrei POPESCU <andreimpopescu@gmail.com> - 2020-06-03 07:30 +0200
        Re: Something is buggy - was [Re: Debian man pages have annoying  feature(sic)] l0f4r0@tuta.io - 2020-06-02 16:30 +0200
  [CLARIFICATION] Re: Debian man pages have annoying feature(sic) Richard Owlett <rowlett@cloud85.net> - 2020-06-02 12:40 +0200
    Re: [CLARIFICATION] Re: Debian man pages have annoying feature(sic) Dan Ritter <dsr@randomstring.org> - 2020-06-02 14:40 +0200
  Re: Debian man pages have annoying feature(sic) Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu> - 2020-06-02 16:40 +0200

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