Re: mdoc EXIT STATUS (Was: pending open issues)

[Ingo Schwarze <schwarze@usta.de>]

Hi Kristaps,

Kristaps Dzonsons wrote on Fri, Aug 06, 2010 at 05:48:27PM +0200:
> Joerg Sonnenberger wrote:
>> On Tue, Aug 03, 2010 at 11:28:54PM +0200, Ingo Schwarze wrote:

>>> the exchange of information and opinions where to best put exit status
>>> documentation for section 1, 6, and 8 manuals seems unfinished to me;
>>> if i understand correctly, what FreeBSD and DragonFly want and do is
>>> plain enough (EXIT STATUS), but in NetBSD and OpenBSD, i find such
>>> information sometimes in DESCRIPTION, sometimes in DIAGNOSTICS.

>> Well, NetBSD never went over all the man pages, but the general
>> consensus for new ones is to use EXIT STATUS. I would make that the
>> recommendation for new man pages.

> I'm fine with this patch, given Joerg's note that Nx uses EXIT
> STATUS along with the others...

Um, i have dropped this patch, given Joerg's note that Nx uses EXIT
STATUS along with the others...  ;-)

Remeber, my abandoned patch said:

  Others, for example
  .Nx
  and
  .Ox ,
  show the same information in the
  .Em DIAGNOSTICS
  section or near the end of the
  .Em DESCRIPTION .

Saying that with respect to NetBSD does not seem fair, so i won't
commit it, and i'm not planning to commit anything else here for
now.  Well, maybe NetBSD still has the exit status in DIAGNOSTICS
and DESCRIPTION on some pages, but they don't want that any more,
by Joerg's statement above.

We have not made a final decision yet, but we are seriously
considering to switch OpenBSD to use EXIT STATUS as well, even
though that means we will have to adapt a bit more than 1000 manuals,
and even though a section with a single sentence will not look
that pretty.  But there are two arguments in favour of EXIT STATUS:
It makes finding that bit of information really easy, and it's good
when you don't need to learn different conventions for each system.

Yours,
  Ingo
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