From owner-freebsd-doc Fri Nov 10 0:50: 7 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-doc@freebsd.org Received: from freefall.freebsd.org (freefall.FreeBSD.org [216.136.204.21]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 29B5237B479 for ; Fri, 10 Nov 2000 00:50:03 -0800 (PST) Received: (from gnats@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.9.3/8.9.2) id AAA91680; Fri, 10 Nov 2000 00:50:03 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from gnats@FreeBSD.org) Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2000 00:50:03 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <200011100850.AAA91680@freefall.freebsd.org> To: freebsd-doc@freebsd.org Cc: From: Mike Meyer Subject: Re: docs/22676: No man pages for Make.conf or /usr/src/sys/Makefile Reply-To: Mike Meyer Sender: owner-freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org The following reply was made to PR docs/22676; it has been noted by GNATS. From: Mike Meyer To: Sheldon Hearn Cc: Subject: Re: docs/22676: No man pages for Make.conf or /usr/src/sys/Makefile Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2000 02:32:25 -0600 (CST) Sheldon Hearn types: > On Thu, 09 Nov 2000 13:22:59 CST, Mike Meyer wrote: > > Even though I've shown you how to do things so this doesn't make the > > stale documentation problem any worse than it already is, and it > > improves the accessibility of the documentation? > Yup. However, I do think that my argument is mostly emotional. :-) I actually expected that to be the case. Changing someone's mind via email is nearly impossible. > I have this pretty deep-seated feeling that manpages that document the > obvious aren't good. I actually agree with that - what you need in those cases is a man page pointing out where "the obvious" can be found. For make.conf, that information is the comments in /etc/defaults/make.conf, so you might as well just maintain the man page as the comments. For periodic.conf and rc.conf, that doesn't make as much sense - but we've got man pages for those already. > However, you can probably just ignore everything I've said, given Nik > Clayton's counter argument and the fact that I have nothing to say in > answer to it. :-) I haven't seen that mail. It's not attached to the PR. Could you tell me where it showed up, or possibly forward it to me? Thanx,