Arch Linux

Summary:
Proposal of implementation for automated building of optional doc packages, instead of removing the docs.


Motivation:
Many users (me included) feel uneasy about the decision to strip the doc from the packages by default, as can be argued from the many forum threads about this topic.
It has been suggested (http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=47434) to start a community project to deliver the missing docs, but it is my opinion that it would be an absolute overkill and a "dirt" solution.


Details:
My proposal is to modify makepkg to make it build, along with $pkgname-$pkgver-$pkgrel-$CARCH.pkg.tar.gz, also $pkgname-$pkgver-$pkgrel-$CARCH.doc.tar.gz, containing the otherwise rm'ed docs (if present).

I attach a patch for makepkg to better show my idea of implementation.

The pacman command would need to implement the option "--withdocs", that downloads and installs also the .doc.tar.gz (if available). Said option should work also with the -U option (used in makepkg): in this case the .doc.tar.gz (if present) should be in the same folder of the .pkg.tar.gz .

makepkg.conf would require an additional DOCEXT='.doc.tar.gz' default, if not coded in the makepkg script.

PROs:
+ backwards compatible
+ installation of the documentation for binary packages optional and off by default
(no impact on Arch guidelines/philosophy)
+ bandwidth saving for users and repo servers: one could just install the extra docs if/when needed,
without the need to download the whole source
+ no extra work for the package maintainers (no need to modify the PKGBUILDs or do extra work by hand)
+ no need to repackage the whole repos: old packages would be still ok, while newer packages would come
with an extra small - if present at all - tarball
+ overhead in terms of bandwith, hd space and cpu cycles for the maintainers substantially unnoticeable

CONs:
- the pacman program needs modifications, and though I imagine they would be quite easy for its
maintainer, I haven't the necessary know-how to submit a working patch
- I am not aware of possible complications e.g. for the repos administrations or weird interactions with
other tools, it seems to me that it would be transparent but I cannot say for sure

An alternative implementation could be to build $pkgname-doc-$pkgver-$pkgrel-$CARCH.pkg.tar.gz just as a regular package.
That would have be easier to implement - no need to modify anything except makepkg - but would be, I think, much less clean and transparent both on the user and on the maintainer side.

I hope to have not bothered anybody, but as this topic is often raised in the forums, and as I think that the idea I propose here would be clean and not difficult to implement, I really hope that the developers would take it into consideration.


P.S.: I would like to write in a kinder manner, but I'm tired and sleepy and English is not my mother language. I assure you that I came with the friendliest attitude :)

P.P.S.: I didn't really test the patch, as in this stage is only here for explaining purposes