Doc directory (was: [28480] trunk/dports/archivers/p7zip)

[Vincent Lefevre]

On 2007-09-03 15:57:47 +0200, N_Ox wrote:
> Recent autotools-based package doc directories default to 
> ${name}-${version} (see libogg and libvorbis).

But why did they do such a change? Note that this is a setting that
comes from these particular packages, not from the autotools:

libogg-1.1.3/doc/Makefile.am contains:

docdir = $(datadir)/doc/$(PACKAGE)-$(VERSION)

AFAIK, this is not standard, as the default autoconf sets the default
to DATAROOTDIR/doc/$(PACKAGE). Unless this has changed recently...

> Also, I love to have maximum informations about my installed packages in 
> the documentation directory and version _is_ an important information.

This can be done in some other way, though (e.g. a VERSION file in the
doc directory, or the NEWS file...).

> Last, you do can have multiple versions of the same package, see automake 

OK, but packages like automake are different: version information
is included everywhere, including in the binary, and only the major
version (e.g. 1.10, not 1.10.x).

> and all, including version in docdir for only a few packages seems quite 
> awkward and inconsistent to me.

Because for automake, there is a reason, and this is not even the
version, but the package name. For instance, concerning automake17,
you have ${prefix}/share/doc/automake17, not
${prefix}/share/doc/automake17-1.7.9. Ditto for DocBook: you have
different incompatible versions, but it makes sense to have them
installed at the same time.

For consistency, it would be better to stick with the autotools standard.

-- 
Vincent Lefèvre <vincent at vinc17.org> - Web: <http://www.vinc17.org/>
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Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / Arenaire project (LIP, ENS-Lyon)