Re: [ITP] italic-man

[Jon Turney <jon.turney@dronecode.org.uk>]

On 21/06/2023 22:45, Thomas Wolff via Cygwin-apps wrote:
> 
> Am 16.02.2023 um 20:17 schrieb Thomas Wolff via Cygwin-apps:
>>
>> Am 16.02.2023 um 19:59 schrieb Jon Turney:
>>> On 21/01/2023 17:04, Thomas Wolff via Cygwin-apps wrote:
>>>> italic-man installs two scripts and hooks them into the workflow of 
>>>> the 'man' command so that the italic attribute of manual pages is 
>>>> actually displayed as italics in terminals that support it.
>>>>
>>>> cygport file attached
>>>
>>> Thanks very much for having another go at this.
>>>
>>> I'm still not overly keen on postinstall/preremove scripts which 
>>> modify a configuration file belonging to another package, so I think 
>>> I'm going to defer to Achim on approving this.
>>>
>>> Taking a step back, may I ask a couple of questions?
>>>
>>> - Can this be done as a patch to man-db and/or groff?
>>>
>>> (perhaps with a separate man-italic package which just contains a 
>>> marker file which enables the functionality?)
>>>
>>> - (If different) how would this be done in an upstreamable way?
>> Thanks for taking a look.
>> I understand your hesitation but there are a number of zp_ postinstall 
>> scripts around that make updates to mandb, mime db, desktop, various 
>> caches, maybe crontab.

There's a difference between updating a cache or db of files which exist 
on the filesystem after the package update and modifying a file which 
might be overwritten by reinstalling or updating a different package.

>> Well, yes, there could be a zp_ script for man that makes this entry 
>> to /etc/man_db.conf itself in the presence of the italic-man package. 
>> If that's desired and someone else updates man, I will cooperate on this.
>> I think the installation of italic-man does this in an upstreamable 
>> way except for the postinstall mechanism of course which seems to be 
>> different (if existent at all) everywhere.
>> Thomas
> I've added a zp_man-db-italic.dash postinstall script as a proposal for 
> man-db to address your concerns, to be found in the repository 
> github.com/mintty/italic-man. However, I find not documentation about 
> these zp_ things, it seems they are just all called after each setup. So 

They are briefly covered in [1].  If that's missing some details, please 
let me know and I'll see what can be done to improve it.

[1] https://cygwin.com/packaging-package-files.html#postinstall

> would it actually make a difference whether the zp_ is a script of 
> italic-man or of man-db? I've also added a cygport file to the 
> repository so you can try the update if you like.
> About your first question
>> - Can this be done as a patch to man-db and/or groff?
> Do you mean the whole thing should not be a separate package at all but 
> completely patched into man-db?

Well, yes, that would avoid all the knots caused by post-install scripts 
with uncertain ordering I'm worrying about.

Can you explain, in general terms, why this isn't a feature of stock 
man-db already?

> Looking forward to your opinion and that of the man-db package maintainer.
> And yes, the hook works on Linux too, so it could be provided somehow 
> upstream.

Thanks continuing to grind away at this.