bug#61720: BUG: omission of crucial detail in 'chown --reference' man page (vs info)

[Pádraig Brady]

On 22/02/2023 22:07, Michael Coleman wrote:
> Hi,
>
> The (RHEL 7) man page for GNU 'chown' has (only) this for the '--reference' 
> flag:
>
>      use RFILE's owner and group rather than specifying OWNER:GROUP values
>
> which omits the crucial second sentence, included in the info tree:
>
>       Change the user and group of each FILE to be the same as those of
>       REF_FILE.  If REF_FILE is a symbolic link, do not use the user and
>       group of the symbolic link, but rather those of the file it refers
>       to.
>
> (Note that '--no-deference' doesn't affect this behavior.)
>
> I can't be sure, but I think the GNU build itself is generating this man page, 
> as opposed to it having been created by RHEL.
>
> I understand that the man pages are secondary and brief, but they shouldn't be 
> actively misleading, IMO.

It is worth stating that in the man page,
especially since one might think --no-dereference might change behavior.

Fixing this with the attached.

Marking this as done.

thanks,
Pádraig

chown-doc-ref-symlinks.patch
Description: Text Data