From owner-freebsd-questions Sat Dec 14 2:49:30 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7F61D37B404 for ; Sat, 14 Dec 2002 02:49:26 -0800 (PST) Received: from mailsrv.otenet.gr (mailsrv.otenet.gr [195.170.0.5]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B4AE143EC2 for ; Sat, 14 Dec 2002 02:49:23 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from keramida@ceid.upatras.gr) Received: from gothmog.gr (patr530-a095.otenet.gr [212.205.215.95]) by mailsrv.otenet.gr (8.12.6/8.12.6) with ESMTP id gBEAnJQk010991; Sat, 14 Dec 2002 12:49:20 +0200 (EET) Received: from gothmog.gr (gothmog [127.0.0.1]) by gothmog.gr (8.12.6/8.12.6) with ESMTP id gBEAnFk3026527; Sat, 14 Dec 2002 12:49:17 +0200 (EET) (envelope-from keramida@ceid.upatras.gr) Received: (from keramida@localhost) by gothmog.gr (8.12.6/8.12.6/Submit) id gBE8KwpN025747; Sat, 14 Dec 2002 10:20:58 +0200 (EET) (envelope-from keramida@ceid.upatras.gr) Date: Sat, 14 Dec 2002 10:20:58 +0200 From: Giorgos Keramidas To: "Gary W. Swearingen" Cc: "Marc G. Fournier" , freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: layered file systems ... Message-ID: <20021214082058.GC19785@gothmog.gr> References: <20021213095811.A13175-100000@hub.org> <20021213151455.GD92171@blazingdot.com> <20021213113108.B13175-100000@hub.org> <20021213162521.GA96011@blazingdot.com> <20021213133130.S13175-100000@hub.org> <8lel8lk398.l8l@localhost.localdomain> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <8lel8lk398.l8l@localhost.localdomain> Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On 2002-12-13 13:39, "Gary W. Swearingen" wrote: > "Marc G. Fournier" writes: > > That's kinda what I'm wondering ... is it just that nobody has updated the > > man page since '94 ... from looking at the sources, ther have been mods to > > it since then: > > If you're referring to the manpage date which gets displayed with the > manpage, you can fugidaboudit; according to the "mdoc" manpage, it's the > "date of authorship", which most read with an implied "original". I > complained to the doc people that this policy makes FreeBSD stuff look > unmaintained to casual users (at least). You can guess the response. I do remember the thread, but a quick search in my ~/mail archive didn't show anything about it. An old date in a manpage doesn't necessarily mean that its text is old. The misunderstanding you described is valid, but the .Dd tag has been used for 'major revisions' of the manpages since a long time AFAIK. Furthermore, since the date of last modification is readily available at the source of the manpage itself, and there are tools to find and review it, there is no real reason to use the .Dd information for the same reason. The `date' field of the manpage is currently different from the `last modification date' of the source, and merging the two would lose us some information; namely the date of the last major revision of each manpage. Both dates are easy to find, using tools that are standard in the system: $ man 1 ls | tail -1 FreeBSD 5.0 May 19, 2002 FreeBSD 5.0 $ zcat `man -w 1 ls` | ident $FreeBSD: src/bin/ls/ls.1,v 1.72 2002/11/25 13:52:57 ru Exp $ "Some users might be confused" is not a good enough reason for merging the two date fields, since losing information is bad, but answering a few questions like "are my manpages old?" once in a while is not really bad :) To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message