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Re: [PATCH] Fix up LD_* vars behaviour


On Fri, Apr 13, 2012 at 10:57 AM, Nix <nix@esperi.org.uk> wrote:
> On 13 Apr 2012, Petr Baudis said:
>> ? I believe that man-pages are the de facto reference documentation for
>> GNU libc used by the developers, even in cases where both man-pages and
>> the info manual cover something, and we should face that reality, i.e.
>> actively care for man-pages correctness and completeness, not treat it
>> with contempt or indifference.
>
> FWIW until I started working for a Linux distributor, I had never worked
> with anyone who realised the glibc info documentation even *existed*,
> let alone looked there for anything. They used the manpages and (if you
> were lucky) POSIX. (This is, of course, anecdotal, but I would not be
> surprised to find that it was replicated in pretty much every Unix
> development shop out there.)
>
> I actually *like* info documentation, and even so I hardly ever remember
> the glibc docs exist. Their coverage is sufficiently much less than the
> manpages these days that they serve little to no purpose to me, other
> than searchability. If I have no idea where in the docs some tidbit
> might be, *then* I use the glibc info docs. Otherwise, never.

My `mad science' plan is to convince someone to use Eclipse help to
put together *all* of the GNU projects and the man pages into one
giant searchable blob.

One of the things I like about CodeBench's search is that when I type
"cfi_startproc" I get *all* references across *all* GNU tools manuals
including the tid-bits hidden in some other place that show an example
or two for how something should be done.

> The Linux manpages used to be less complete than the glibc info pages,
> and dissociated across many projects. Thanks to Andries and (especially)
> Michael's stalwart maintainership, this is very much no longer the case.
> They are the best online documentation on the platform, and ignoring
> them is a serious mistake.

Agreed.

Cheers,
Carlos.


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