%doc package policy

[Toshio]

On Sun, 2005-05-22 at 19:32 -0400, Owen Taylor wrote:
> On Sun, 2005-05-22 at 12:40 -1000, Warren Togami wrote:
> > By FC5, we should make it so nothing in our software relies on the 
> > existence of %doc installed files, that is stuff that ends up in 
> > /usr/share/doc/%{name}-%{version}-%{release}.
> > 
> > rpm --excludedocs should create an installed system that works exactly 
> > the same during runtime.  This is already the case for 99.99% of our 
> > packages, so complying with this rule would require very few changes.
> > 
> > Can we come to agreement on this and add this to packaging policy?
> 
> What does "rely on" mean here? The "Help" menu command in fontforge
> accesses HTML files that are in the %doc directory. I think it actually
> falls back to the web if it doesn't find the files, but say it 
> didn't and displayed an error? Is that relying on the %doc files?
> 
I know of at least one other packsge that does this.  I think this is
relying on the %doc file and would have to change under this policy.

There has also been the occasional tendency to punt on deciding whether
optional/example programs, init scripts, etc are useful enough to be in
the package by putting them in %doc.  I think under this policy we need
to be more careful about doing this.

Neither of these is a reason not to implement this policy.

-Toshio
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