ltsp-build-client --extra-help options not documented in manpage

[Shahar Or]

Dear friends,

Many options which are shown as the output of 'ltsp-build-client --extra-help' are not documented in the ltsp-build-client manpage.

Is there any specific reason for this, please?

Blessings.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
CheckboxSubmission: 86dcece8395aae51e38cfed557ef1e48
CheckboxSystem: 5606fb5d476dcfd021a0181d012c8ef5
Date: Mon Nov 9 21:08:35 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
Package: ltsp-server 5.1.90-0ubuntu3
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=he_IL.UTF-8
 LANG=he_IL.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-14.48-generic
SourcePackage: ltsp
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-14-generic i686

[Scott Balneaves (sbalneav)]

Yup, we haven't written them yet. :)

When we get the time, we'll add them.

[Oliver Grawert (ogra)]

yes, the manpage clearly states the reason and this was done deliberately after a discussion upstream.
ltsp-build-client works completely different depending on what plugins are enabled in your distro ...
having a less generic manpage would mean to maintain one for each distro or even each derivative ...

one way to solve the problem would be to generate the manpage at package buildtime, scan the vendor-plugin and common-plugin dirs and have code that generates a manpage that matches the exact plugin list and pulls options as well as all option descriptions out of the plugin code ...

given that ltsp back when we created the manpage had bigger probs to solve than writing a complex option parser that generates proper manpage code, the decision was to have a generic manpage that points to --extra-help which in turn is generated from plugin code at runtime ...

ogra@osiris:~$ man ltsp-build-client
...
NAME
       ltsp-build-client - Builds an LTSP client system for use with the LTSP server

SYNOPSIS
       ltsp-build-client <options>

DESCRIPTION
       ltsp-build-client builds an ltsp client chroot using standard packages for use with the ltsp server. This chroot installation can be modified in a number of ways as outlined in the OPTIONS section. If present, defaults will be read from the configuration
       file /etc/ltsp/ltsp-build-client.conf, and will be overridden by using the command line options. ltsp-build-client is usually run as the root user. Visit http://www.ltsp.org for more information.

OPTIONS
       Not all options are available on all installations. For a complete list of available options, use the --help and --extra-help options.
...

scott: the code that generates the help output for --extra-help could be used to instead spit out a manpage at buildtime i suppose ...

[Oliver Grawert (ogra)]

also assigning to upstream project ...