Re: Outdated warning

[G. Branden Robinson]

Hi Alex,

At 2023-04-22T20:03:29+0200, Alejandro Colomar wrote:
> I found some spurious warning using 1.23.0-rc3 while linting some mdoc(7)
> page:
[...]
> mdoc warning: .Nx: Unknown NetBSD version '9.0' (#263)
> make: *** [share/mk/build/catman.mk:91: .tmp/man/man1/basenc.1.cat.set] Error 
> 1
> make: *** Deleting file '.tmp/man/man1/basenc.1.cat.set'
> 
> NetBSD 9.0 dates from 2020.

We don't appear to have a volunteer who's willing to diligently keep
tmac/mdoc/doc-syms up to date.  (Except, annoyingly, a lot of the OS
strings are actually in tmac/mdoc/doc-common.)

> Considering that new versions will
> continue to appear, I don't think it makes much sense to try to have a
> comprehensive list of them.  I suggest completely dropping the
> warning.

Its predilection for maintaing gigantic dictionaries of things is
one of my least favorite features of mdoc.  I can guess why it was stuck
in the first place--man page authors can't be trusted to type things
correctly and consistently (true), and there will only ever be one
source of truth (_Goodfellas_ forced laughter).  The world was small and
simple and there was only one BSD and everyone with root on a multi-user
machine ran -CURRENT and belonged to the BSD sysadmin cabal.  What's
sustainable today will be sustainable forever because being a BSD admin
is the best thing on Earth and nothing will ever change.

That world died a long time ago--and from what I understand of CSRG
history, ominous signs were written on the wall even as mdoc(7) was
being developed--but many partisans still cling to it like grim death.

It's a bit late to get any alteration that would address the above into
1.23.0 unless Bertrand re-opens the gates to macro package changes.
(And doing that might mean still more RCs and more delay to 1.23.0
final, so might not be worth it.)

But I have an idea for mitigating the problem.  It involves `soquiet`,
/etc, and distributors.  Hit me up again after 1.23.0 final drops.

Regards,
Branden

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