documentation for packages

[Jörn Clausen <joernc%googlemail.com@localhost>]

Hi!

I think this problem has been discussed several times, but I'd like to
give it another try...

From time to time, people complain that huge subtrees of pkgsrc like
TeX are pulled in to generate documentation (which these people may
never read). I am again stuck with building devel/doxygen, which is
requested by graphics/lensfun, which in turn is needed by
graphics/gimp. No doxygen, no Gimp.

There are numerous packages that have split off their documentation to
separate packages (search for packages named *-doc). Could this be
established as a rule of thumb: Whenever the documentation of a
package is

- too large (especially compared to the package itself)

- that of a library the enduser probably won't need (the documentation, that is)

- is not included in an enduser-consumable format (man pages, ASCII,
HTML, PostScript, PDF, ...) in the original distribution, but needs a
special formatter

it should be moved to a dedicated package? These are just my ideas,
and I know it is impossible to find a set of rules everyone is happy
with. But maybe it is possible to find some rough consensus here?

This would have several benefits:

- less resources when building and installing packages (disk space,
compile time)

- less dependencies, thus sources for errors

Given the fact that NetBSD is always considered a primary choice for
embedded systems, I think its package system should try to reduce its
footprint as good as possible.

-- 
Joern Clausen
http://thebloeg.blogspot.com/
http://www.oe-files.de/oefiles/