What use are these (rpm) entries in 'man'?

[Chris G]

On Fri, Nov 02, 2007 at 06:09:44AM -0400, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
> On Fri, 2 Nov 2007, Chris G wrote:
> 
> > > As it turns out, we've been adding package names and summaries to the
> > > whatis database for a while now (#175595).
> > >
> 
> > OK, so *why* have you been adding this stuff to the whatis database?
> > To my mind it's just misleading as when I do (for example) a "man -k
> > docutils" I see:-
> >
> >     python-docutils     (rpm) - A system for processing plaintext documentation
> >
> > but it doesn't give me any clue at all where to find documentation
> > for docutils.
> 
> i'm not sure what the problem is here.  if you see output along the
> lines of
> 
>       fubar	(1) - one line of info here
> 
> that tells you that there's a man page you can read.  on the other
> hand, if all you see is
> 
>       fubar    (rpm) - info
> 
> then that tells you that there's no man page entry, but at least
> you're getting *some* information.  and some info is generally better
> than nothing.
> 
>   the only confusion up till now has been misunderstanding what that
> "(rpm)" string meant, but now that we know, it's no big deal.
> 
Well, apart from not being very useful, it makes the man page for
apropos (or man -k) wrong!

When you do 'man apropos' it says:-

    NAME
         apropos, whatis - search the whatis database

    SYNOPSIS
         apropos keyword ...
         whatis keyword ...

    DESCRIPTION
         apropos searches a set of database files containing short descriptions of
         system commands for keywords and displays the result on the standard out-
         put.  whatis displays only complete word matches.

         keyword really is an extended regular expression, please read grep(1)
         manual page for more information about its format.

    DIAGNOSTICS
         The apropos utility exits 0 on success, and 1 if no keyword matched.

    SEE ALSO
         grep(1), makewhatis(1), man(1)
 

Adding the (rpm) entries means that the whatis database is no longer a
"set of database files containing short descriptions of system
commands" because the things it puts in there are *not* system
commands.

-- 
Chris Green