Once upon a time, Jan Chaloupka <jchaloup(a)redhat.com> said:
there has been a discussion about if we need cache for man-db for
users
which use man pages or update system only from time to time and thus
don't need to update cache every day. man-db as it is now depends on
systemd which brings another set of packages. The use case is "I just
want to read man page. So I install man which on the other hand download
another set of packages. I want to read man page and it downloads systemd.".
On the majority of systems these days, is it really an issue to cache
man pages anymore? I mean, back when a long man page (thinking about
some of the perl documentation for example) could take a while to
render, it mattered. Now however, systems are much much faster, and we
expect GUI web browsers to render vastly more complicated content in a
fraction of a second.
Maybe the time has come to just stop caching man pages at all, or at
least make that functionality optional (and non-default)?
--
Chris Adams <linux(a)cmadams.net>