Re: [Bug-tar] Who maintains the tar manual pages distributed with Ubuntu?

[Andreas Dilger]

Unfortunately, the tar maintainers have taken the stance that because this
is a GNU project it should use GNU Info instead of a man page, so
they refuse to include the existing man page that has been offered to
them.  As it stands, the distros maintain the tar man page separate
from the package. 

IMHO this is sad, because some people (myself included) prefer
to use a man page over info, and having the man page in the
upstream distro would be a benefit to the users, and would reduce
the duplicate maintenance effort of the distro package maintainers
to update the man page for new releases.

I don't think including the man page in the upstream repo would
noticeably increase maintenance for the upstream maintainers,
since they haven't had to do any of the work for the existing man
page, and they could just accept patches from others to keep it updated.

Hope springs eternal that they might change their minds this time around...

Cheers, Andreas

On 2013-06-09, at 20:20, address@hidden (Eric S. Raymond) wrote:

> It appears they're not in the tar distrubution.
> 
> Also, how do I run the test suite?
> -- 
>        <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/";>Eric S. Raymond</a>
> 
> Such are a well regulated militia, composed of the freeholders,
> citizen and husbandman, who take up arms to preserve their property,
> as individuals, and their rights as freemen.
>        -- "M.T. Cicero", in a newspaper letter of 1788 touching the "militia" 
>            referred to in the Second Amendment to the Constitution.
>