Split all documentation into their own packages

[Florian Rehnisch]

* Gonsolo <gonsolo at gmail.com> [100927 02:57]:
> I own a web server with tight space (1GB). Over 300MB are in /usr,
> over 25MB in /usr/share/doc. I'd like to remove all files in
> /usr/share/doc but unfortunately it is not as easy as removing all
> -doc packages.

Things that take up space:

-- files in /usr/share/doc:
   per (Debian) policy, they can be removed w/o side effects to the
   operation of the system.

-- files in /usr/share/locales:
   mostly translation for binaries, you can have unwanted
   ones be removed by localpurge

-- files in /usr/share/man:
   man pages, sometimes get translated, too.  same as for
   locales.

-- files in /usr/share/info:
   don't know if emacs hates them to be removed; I vim.

> Is it possible to set up a policy that all packages that have files in
> /usr/share/doc should be -doc packages and split from the main
> package?

Don't see a way: that would mean much efford to the package
maintainers w/o a broad use ...

And personally I think, a package up to 256KB packed size
shouldn't be split up in -bin, -doc. -l10n at all.

And as said before, the files
/usd/<package>/{copyright,changelog(.Debian)?} are even
required by (Debian) policy for each package, so that would
be a contradiction ...

HTH,
 flori