All pages: Replace the 4th argument to .TH by "Linux man-pages (unreleased)"

On 8/20/22 13:57, Alejandro Colomar wrote:
> On 8/20/22 07:43, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
>>
>> In my opinion it would benefit readers of the Linux man-pages if the
>> fourth argument to `TH` were what it is in many other man pages: an
>> identifier for the name and version number of the release originating
>> them.  In every page it would be clear what version of the man-pages was
>> being viewed.  Little sophistication would be demanded of the user to
>> check the Web to determine the relative age of the pages, independently
>> of the modification date of the particular page.  Such usage would be
>> congruent with the argument's purpose in AT&T and BSD Unix, where this
>> datum was "7th Edition", "System III", or "4.2 Berkeley Distribution",
>> or similar.
>
> I thought about it in the past...  That field was the only thing that
> said where a function came from.  If we removed GNU (or something else),
> how would someone know where does the function or whatever comes from??
>
> I guess that's also why the colophon was appended to the pages by
> Michael.  Since we couldn't use the 4th field for that, we had to have a
> COLOPHON section.
>
> However, the addition of the LIBRARY section seems to fix this issue,
> and so now we have an even more precise way to determine where a given
> function comes from (including the library file name, and the linker
> option).
>
> This gives me another argument for those who don't like to have a
> LIBRARY section for libc stuff (since -lc is unnecessary), and consider
> it noise.
>
>>
>> Further, as the libc-related man pages in this project expand coverage
>> to other libcs than GNU's, the alternatives to the empty string
>> proferred in man-pages(7) seem less and less appropriate.
>
> Agree.  LIBRARY seems much more appropriate for that purpose.
>
> And this helps remove the COLOPHON section (or at least, we don't need
> to autogenerate it, since the version number now comes in .TH, and the
> COLOPHON is static; so I can even move it to a smaller REPORTING BUGS
> section).

Scripted change:

$ find man* -type f \
  |xargs sed -Ei '/^.TH /s/(.TH +[^ ]+ +[^ ]+ +[^ ]+) +"[^"]*"/\1 "Linux man-pages (unreleased)"/'

$ find man* -type f \
  |xargs sed -Ei '/^.TH /s/(.TH +[^ ]+ +[^ ]+ +[^ ]+) +[^" ]+/\1 "Linux man-pages (unreleased)"/'

$ git restore man5/tzfile.5
$ git restore man8/zdump.8
$ git restore man8/zic.8
$ git restore man7/bpf-helpers.7

Link: <https://lore.kernel.org/linux-man/20220819180323.dbsgxh5qvcjabjm6@jwilk.net/T/#u>
Reported-by: Jakub Wilk <jwilk@jwilk.net>
Reported-by: "G. Branden Robinson" <g.branden.robinson@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Alejandro Colomar <alx.manpages@gmail.com>
Cc: Ingo Schwarze <schwarze@openbsd.de>
Cc: Michael Kerrisk <mtk.manpages@gmail.com>

1 files changed, 1 insertions, 1 deletions

diff --git a/man3head/sysexits.h.3head b/man3head/sysexits.h.3head
index 04e136b66..627132da3 100644
--- a/man3head/sysexits.h.3head
+++ b/man3head/sysexits.h.3head
@@ -7,7 +7,7 @@
 .\"
 .\" Rewritten for the Linux man-pages by Alejandro Colomar
 .\"
-.TH sysexits.h 3head 2022-07-29 GNU "Linux Programmer's Manual"
+.TH sysexits.h 3head 2022-07-29 "Linux man-pages (unreleased)" "Linux Programmer's Manual"
 .SH NAME
 sysexits.h \- exit codes for programs
 .SH LIBRARY