sk98lin man page should not be installed on distributions that don't install the driver

[Stephen Hemminger]

Binary package hint: manpages

sk98lin man page is for old driver which has been removed for over a year, and deprecated for two release before that.
Just remove it.

[Michael Kerrisk (mtk-manpages)]

Upstream man-pages-3.41 will add a sentence that the driver was removed in 2.6.26.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Forest (foresto)]

To clarify: Merely noting in the man page that the driver was removed is not sufficient. The man page must be removed as well, in order to avoid conflicting with packages that install the current version of the driver and man page. For example, this one:

https://launchpad.net/~foresto/+archive/extradrivers/

[Stéphane Aulery (lkppo)]

Packets "nct6775-dkms" and "sk98lin-dkms" have been removed from the distribution. So there will be no conflict and a simple note is enough.

[Forest (foresto)]

There is a conflict as soon as a user installs a package that includes the driver (and man page), such as the one that I maintained in a PPA. Pretending that the Ubuntu "manpages" package is the only source that could ever exist for that driver is a bit disingenuous, don't you think?

In any case, I have no idea why anyone would want to continue distributing an out-of-date man page for a driver that is not even included in their distribution. To use a car analogy, it's like Honda shipping with its cars a Toyota manual that contains incorrect information.

[Stéphane Aulery (lkppo)]

What you say is contradictory. If the driver is no longer included in any new version of Ubuntu, there will be no conflict. No ?

I know that there may be other sources for the man pages. Other packages that installs this page are they available in a newer version of Ubuntu? I'm not an Ubuntu user, but Debian, I do not know how to see it. It seemed to me that this is the case. Yes, no? And for other distributions?

I'm asked upstream to delete the page, but I promise nothing. It's been 3 years since he added the note. One can think that now there is any more machine that uses this driver.

[Forest (foresto)]

What I wrote was not contradictory. Please try to remember that many Ubuntu users configure software sources in addition to the official Ubuntu ones. (That's what PPAs are all about, after all.) Therefore, a spurious man page installed by an Ubuntu source can and will conflict with a proper man page installed by another source.

Since you mentioned it, there absolutely are machines that still use that driver. I know of one less than five minutes away from where I'm standing right now. (Perhaps you live such an affluent life that you can afford to replace all your computers every year or two, but not everyone has that luxury.)

[Stéphane Aulery (lkppo)]

Man pages are for all distributions. Red Hat 5, which will be supported until 2020 [1], included kernel 2.6.18 [2] and the driver sk98lin [3] without man page. Personally it does not bother me to delete this page, but how do we do?

I think upstream should not delete the page and the Debian package / Ubuntu should not install it.

Others ideas ?

[1] https://access.redhat.com/support/policy/updates/errata#Life_Cycle_Dates
[2] https://access.redhat.com/articles/3078#RHEL5
[3]http://rpm.pbone.net/index.php3/stat/4/idpl/27208332/dir/redhat_el_5/com/sk98lin-kmdl-2.6.18-371.12.1.el5-10.50.1.3-12.el5.i686.rpm.html

[Forest (foresto)]

> I think upstream should not delete the page and the Debian package / Ubuntu should not install it.

That makes sense to me. Install the man page only on distributions that include the corresponding driver.

[Stéphane Aulery (lkppo)]

Phew, we agree. It deserves a change of title and status and a bug for Debian maintainer.