man-1.6g includes these executables:
/usr/bin/apropos
/usr/bin/man
/usr/bin/man2dvi
/usr/bin/man2html
/usr/bin/whatis
/usr/sbin/makewhatis

And was released in Jan. 2011. I cannot find the upstream for man. The links I followed were all broken.

Where is this package maintained? Should slackware upgrade to man-db if man is abandoned?

As long as these programs work (and AFAIK they do), what would be the benefit of replacing them?

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IIRC, man-deb is the equivalent of slackware's manpages package, not man itself. man doesn't include manpages and the manpages/man-db provide some manpages which are not included with other packages.

The original question "Should slackware upgrade to man-db if man is abandoned?"

Is your answer "No"?

and the other question was "Where is this package maintained?"

I guess you don't know.

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Ha, no you definitely do not recall correctly.

https://wiki.debian.org/ManPage
"The man-db package includes three tools for finding information and/or documentation about your Linux system: man, apropos and whatis."

Yes, my answer is no.

"Abandoned" only matters for a software that doesn't work anymore, have security holes or needs new features.

If PV wants to ship the man pages additional utilities[1] found in man-db he can just add them to man-pages. Actually that's not a matter of upgrading a binary, rather a packaging decision.

Also, bear in mind that the name, version number or date of release of a package do not mean much. What counts is the content of the package.

[1]mandb and catman, as zsoelim is a symlink to soelim, already shipped in groff.

How would we know if man-1.6g has bugs or needs new features? Are you again saying you know it is flawless?
Earlier you said "As long as these programs work (and AFAIK they do)".

Do you mean as long as they work then no one should need to file bugs or ask for additional features? This is not the open source way.

No program is flawless. I am just saying that I am not aware of any bug report or feature request about the programs in this package.

The open source way for an orphaned project is that someone takes the initiative of adopting it or forking it if need be.

But let's be practical instead of rhetorical: do you, personally, have a feature request that you would like to submit to someone or found a bug? If not, I really do not see your point.

Also, how do you know that the binaries shipped in man-db are better than those in man-1.6g? Can you provide any evidence?

Last, be aware that a package and/or source tarball being hosted e.g. in a Debian or Fedora repository do not imply that they are actively maintained, unless you equate "changing the build number to fit the incoming distribution release" to "actively maintaining".

How would you be aware of any? There's no place to report bugs or feature requests. Slackware is not the only distro using man-1.6g.

Is that also the slackware way? Who will host it then and where? If it's not the slackware way, then what is the slackware way? To leave things as they are?

So if I adopt man-1.6g will slackware then take any new features or bug fixes from my repo?

Simple:

1. If there is a known upstream, go there.
2. Else, for all packages shipped in Slackware, this forum is the right place, at least for bug reports.

Ask PV or a Slackware contributor.

Any volunteer with the needed skills. That's how open source software work.
Again I do not speak on behalf of PV. But I am sure he can't adopt all orphaned open source projects. If you have a better idea, please share it with us.

Why not, if you are serious?

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How could you be "aware" of any bug reports or feature requests when there is no source repository upstream? Where are you getting your information?

As for any other software in the same situation, and there are many: coming from a security advisory, a feature or bug request posted in a forum, whatever.

This being said I am not in a mood to endlessly answer someone arguing in an aim that I do not understand.

Maybe you just would like to have man-1.6g replaced by man-db? I am not in concern then, but I think that PV is aware of this thread, so probably you do not need to elaborate further.

This being said you are free to post again in this thread. I won't.

Since there is no upstream, Didier is likely making his claim about not being aware of bugs due to the lack of reports on this forum about it. Pat is not one to jump on the latest and greatest unless there's a reason to (as Didier said, to fix bugs, add new features, etc). Just because a project might be abandoned does not mean it can't be used in Slackware. As has been discussed previously on the forum, even if a program can't be compiled, yet it runs without issue, that is not a reason to replace it.

If issues are found with an abandoned program then Pat will make a decision on what to do. That could mean switch to a different package, try to fix the current one with patches, use a forked version (if it is available), or remove the package completely without installing a replacement (not really possible with man). Any speculation on this forum is just that... speculation. We can't know what Pat would do until it occurs.

The politest word I can think of for that is "bollocks". *If* there was a known bug -- which clearly there isn't, otherwise you'd have mentioned it already --

• Here
• PV's email
• bugtraq, full disclosure, CERT, Open Source Security, etc
• or just fork it on Github and fix it

I have personally fixed wayyy over 100 SlackBuilds for -current, so I know there are *very* many projects that are abandoned and broken (even if they look maintained), and I know that many of them get fixed by distro packagers like me, or by random people who just fork & fix on github. And I can quote examples of all this, but frankly it is Saturday night and I can't be arsed.

If it's a useful feature -- *yes* -- obviously. Do you have an actual feature in mind for transformative disruption of manpage technology, or is this all just hypothetical moaning?

The Googles (duh), Github, and distro repos. I have git etc for Debian, Fedora, Arch, Gentoo and Mageia bookmarked...

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This makes no sense. You are saying there's no bugs or feature requests because I didn't report one.

I couldn't find any of these for man-1.6g but you didn't read this entire thread and just wanted to jump in so I understand how you would answer incorrectly.

What fixes did you make? Or did you get patches? What packages?


I never knew slackware took pull requests or used github. Please post some links to those.




What about git for slackware? Can you share that bookmark? Or just share a man-1.6g bookmark?