On my TeX Live installation there are about 200 Makefiles installed in the texmf-dist/doc subtree. They, of course, hardly count as documentation. Even strangier their placement seems in light of that every TeX Live package also has a source archive, where (and only where) the Makefiles would normally go.
However, this doesn't seem to be an unnoticed mistake, as even texdoc knows enough about them to have an exception rule:
> texdoc -d impatient . . . texdoc debug-score: Start scoring /data/texlive/texmf-dist/doc/plain/impatient/Makefile texdoc debug-score: Name used: impatient/makefile texdoc debug-score: Start heuristic scoring with pattern: impatient texdoc debug-score: New heuristic score: 1. Reason: subword match texdoc debug-score: New heuristic score: 0.1. Reason: bad extension texdoc debug-score: New heuristic score: 1.6. Reason: directory bonus texdoc debug-score: Final heuristic score: 1.6 texdoc debug-score: Max pattern score: 1.6 texdoc debug-score: Adjust by -1000 from global pattern '/makefile' <=== texdoc debug-score: Final score: -998.4 . . .
Why are the Makefiles placed in the documentation subtree?
.../koma-script/doc/english/Makefile. Other are there possibly by mistake or not very clear instructions of the package authors. – egreg Mar 5 '12 at 21:22texmf-dist/source/, nottexmf-dist/doc. But I agree: files liketexmf-dist/doc/context/manuals/reference/en/Makefilebelong into doc, not source. – Martin Schröder Mar 5 '12 at 23:43contextref.pdf. Why does it belong todoc? It's not documentation and has no use for the user. – Andrey Vihrov Mar 6 '12 at 7:42:-)– Martin Schröder Mar 6 '12 at 8:55lsin the directory you point out and saw a huge list of source files instead of ready-to-use documentation. It seems that my definition of "documentation" differs much from the TeX Live's one. – Andrey Vihrov Mar 6 '12 at 10:22