On Fri, Nov 02, 2007 at 06:09:44AM -0400, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
> On Fri, 2 Nov 2007, Chris G wrote:
>
> > > As it turns out, we've been adding package names and summaries to the
> > > whatis database for a while now (#175595).
> > >
>
> > OK, so *why* have you been adding this stuff to the whatis database?
> > To my mind it's just misleading as when I do (for example) a "man -k
> > docutils" I see:-
> >
> > python-docutils (rpm) - A system for processing plaintext documentation
> >
> > but it doesn't give me any clue at all where to find documentation
> > for docutils.
>
> i'm not sure what the problem is here. if you see output along the
> lines of
>
> fubar (1) - one line of info here
>
> that tells you that there's a man page you can read. on the other
> hand, if all you see is
>
> fubar (rpm) - info
>
> then that tells you that there's no man page entry, but at least
> you're getting *some* information. and some info is generally better
> than nothing.
>
> the only confusion up till now has been misunderstanding what that
> "(rpm)" string meant, but now that we know, it's no big deal.
>
Well, apart from not being very useful, it makes the man page for
apropos (or man -k) wrong!
When you do 'man apropos' it says:-
NAME
apropos, whatis - search the whatis database
SYNOPSIS
apropos keyword ...
whatis keyword ...
DESCRIPTION
apropos searches a set of database files containing short descriptions of
system commands for keywords and displays the result on the standard out-
put. whatis displays only complete word matches.
keyword really is an extended regular expression, please read grep(1)
manual page for more information about its format.
DIAGNOSTICS
The apropos utility exits 0 on success, and 1 if no keyword matched.
SEE ALSO
grep(1), makewhatis(1), man(1)
Adding the (rpm) entries means that the whatis database is no longer a
"set of database files containing short descriptions of system
commands" because the things it puts in there are *not* system
commands.
--
Chris Green
