Ubuntu

Is there a way to see installed package documentation?

Asked by Kristopher Ives

I often install many packages related to development and later want to check out their documentation. This is a very hit-and-miss scenario for me, since some packages don't have any documentation included in them. They all seem to have the same boilerplate content for AUTHORS, COPYRIGHT, etc. in their /usr/share/doc entry. Currently the best way I have to find if I already have documentation is to search my installed packages for the -doc package and then look/hope it's in /usr/share/doc in a "normal" place.

Are there any tools, or is this seriously how we are expected to find documentation? Almost always, if I am online, it's faster and easier to just go find it using Google. But that does make installing these packages very worthless to me.

I like the documentation for Java and PHP5 in /usr/share/doc because I can just bookmark them and use them exactly like their HTTP hosted versions (mostly). However, when someone installs these packages they won't know where/if/how these exist.

Thanks,
Kris

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Florian Diesch (diesch) said : 		#1

On installing documentation is registered using the install-docs program (see man install-docs and /usr/share/doc/doc-base/). If you have a local web server installed you can use dwww or dhelp to browse and search this docs. I don't know what's the best way without a web server, maybe the Gnome help browser (yelp) can be used.

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