[H-GEN] Contributing to mysqldump man page

[Arjen Lentz]

Hi Anthony,

Just following up on this older msg.


Anthony Irwin wrote:
> This may be a stupid question but I was wondering what
> the best procedure would be for adding information to
> the mysqldump man page. 
> 
> Is it distro specific or a standard man page shipped
> with mysql?
> 
> The reason for me wanting to add an entry to the
> mysqldump man page is that I spent quite a lot of time
> trying to find out how to dump information from mysql
> 4.1 to mysql 3.23 as there are a lot of distros still
> using version 3.23 and not the newer version 4 I
> thought it might be useful to have in the man page.
> 
> The parameter I used to make the mysqldump from 4.1
> compatible with 3.23 is --compatible=mysql323
> 
> Anyway is this worth looking into or should people
> wanting to do what I did simply research an answer as
> i did?

What Ronald Bradford wrote is all good advice.

AFAIK the man pages are
  - part of the original MySQL source, i.e. they are maintained by MySQL AB.
  - the man pages are also considered rather static, i.e. they contain 
the basic info but not all upto-date options. This is a practicality, 
since there is a very comprehensive online manual already, and of course 
all tools implement --help as well.

The online manual is now maintained in DocBook (used to be Texinfo); 
now, it may be possible to export parts to man format, and if there's 
interest in that, I can certainly pass on the idea. If someone were to 
write (or find) the stylesheet to do it, that'd be even better.
That way, the man pages could be automatically kept upto-date.


Regards,
Arjen.
-- 
Arjen Lentz, Community Relations Manager, MySQL AB
Program Chair, MySQL Users Conference

MySQL Users Conference 2006 (Santa Clara CA, 24-27 April)
http://www.mysqluc.com/