Where do I write a manual entry when creating a deb package? Is there any formatting rule/best practice to respect?
I'm very new to deb package creation. Following some tutorials, I just created a package that installs/executes nicely, so now I'd like to write some documentation so that man myFancyPackage returns something instead of no manual entry for myFancyPackage.
Unfortunately none of the tutorials I found speak about manual creation.
There are lots of methods to build a Debian package, but the current "best practice" is to use the tools provided by Debhelper. In the case of man pages, there is a tool named dh_installman (read its manpage) that is called automatically by dh. If you used dh_make or similar to create a template for your package, then a dh invocation will be in your debian/rules file.
dh_installman works by reading the file debian/manpages, or debian/nameofyourpackage.manpages. This file has a list of paths pointing to the man pages of your package. The paths are relative to the root of your package. Here you have an example of a real package. Then, this program will properly install your man pages in the right directory.
So, to sum up, you only have to create the debian/package.manpages and fill it with the paths to your man pages. These paths have to be relative to the root of your package. If you, the packager, are writing the man pages, then they have to be placed in the Debian/ directory.