No manual page for /usr/bin/postgis nor /usr/bin/postgis_restore.pl

[Bas Couwenberg]

The utilities are now installed in /usr/bin instead of /usr/lib/postgresql/<version>/bin/.

This triggers a lintian issue for the Debian package build because man pages are not installed for all executables.

Please add manpages for /usr/bin/postgis and /usr/bin/postgis_restore.pl. The latter should also be installed without the language extension.

[Sandro Santilli <strk@…>]

In 00f6faa/git:

Add manpage for postgis script

References #5447

[Sandro Santilli <strk@…>]

In 57c738f8/git:

Rename postgis_restore.pl to postgis_restore

References #5447

[strk]

Bas: are you willing to give your view about why dropping the .pl seems important to you ? See ​https://git.osgeo.org/gitea/postgis/postgis/pulls/133#issuecomment-11334

[pramsey]

Why not install them in the PgSQL places? They are hardly system utilities.

[strk]

On my system I have /usr/bin/pg_restore (which is a perl script). Our postgis_restore is meant to be used in place of pg_restore when the dump contains script-based PostGIS

[Bas Couwenberg]

Replying to strk:

Bas: are you willing to give your view about why dropping the .pl seems important to you ?

It triggers script-with-language-extension lintian issues for the Debian package, from the tag description:

When scripts are installed into a directory in the system PATH, the script name should not include an extension such as .sh or .pl that denotes the scripting language currently used to implement it. The implementation language may change; if it does, leaving the name the same would be confusing and changing it would be disruptive.

Please refer to ​Scripts (Section 10.4) in the Debian Policy Manual for details.

[strk]

The debian policy makes sense to me, the only question is: do we need the retain the .pl extension for windows install ? Is that a prerequisite for scripts to work there ?

[robe]

@strk yes the .pl extension is needed for windows I think. That said like I said I don't think too many windows usersk now how to use perl commandline scripts or are even able to. So if it's too much trouble to keep it for windows, I'd say you can strip it for the sake of Linux systems where most of these would be used anyway.

[robe]

Let me clarify my answer. Windows users can still use it by doing

perl postgis_restore

It's just they'd need to look into the file to know it's a perl script. For those smart enough to know how to use it, it's not a huge issue as long as we note it in the docs and release notes.

[strk]

Ok I'll strip on install, and revise the NEWS entry about the script which at this point seems to be a new thing in 3.4.0 (the whole script, which was previously not even installed)

[strk]

Sorry, the "not even installed" note was about postgis, not postgis_restore.pl. I'll strip the .pl from postgis_restore on install

[Sandro Santilli <strk@…>]

In d377adf/git:

Install postgis_restore without the .pl suffix

References #5447

[Sandro Santilli <strk@…>]

In 45d1967b/git:

Add man page for postgis_restore

Closes #5447