man pages - was: wiki vs documentation

[Elizabeth Krumbach Joseph]

On Thu, Sep 19, 2013 at 9:48 AM, Lars Noodén <lars.nooden at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 09/19/2013 07:45 PM, Elizabeth Krumbach Joseph wrote:
>> Man pages are typically written by the upstream software project and
>> then just included in the packages we ship with Ubuntu. As such, any
>> edits of them should probably be done upstream rather than patching
>> the Ubuntu packages with our own additions, unless they are
>> Ubuntu-specific changes that we're looking to document.
>
> What would be the best way then to go about proposing edits to man pages
> if it requires collaboration upstream?

Upstreams vary so there is no one way, but essentially you find one
you want to work on, figure out how to contribute to that project and
do it.

Some common ways:

Create a bug report and include a patch.

Submit patches on the development mailing list.

Submit a merge proposal for your change directly on their repository.

You'll really want to look into each project to figure out how they do
it, since your patch could get ignored if it's not submitted properly.

Once the changes are included upstream, the changes will trickle into
Ubuntu once that version of the software gets to Ubuntu. Then we have
improved manpages and so does every other distribution that uses that
package :)

-- 
Elizabeth Krumbach Joseph || Lyz || pleia2
http://www.princessleia.com