Cannot load documentation on Linux (rustup issue)

[free2create]

I am well aware of the limitation of snaps and accessing documents paths that contain directories that begin with '.'.
However since those issue have been closed I have no direct way to provide feedback.

Snaps have two ways to be packaged:

1. The default method is to place in a sandbox
2. Using the 'Classic' packaging which is for tools that have the need to access the entire computer.
   kubernetes kubectl is an example of a tool that uses Classic packaging.

firefox and chromium are not and should not change to Classic packaging to meets rustup needs since it weakens security.

Alternatives ?
Creating softlinks such as
ln -s .rustup Documents/rustup
will not work since the link is resolved to the hidden directory.
hard links to directories are not supported.

Other HTML Viewers
There is no one standard for alternate html viewers such as

lynx
While its possible to install programs such as `lynx' on Linux, it would have to be installed manually :
lynx file:///home/rleland/.rustup/toolchains/stable-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu/share/doc/rust/html/book/index.html

Its is quite usable, with color coding, the ability to follow links, etc.

If you are open to using an alternate html viewer I can take a stab at adding that feature maybe by adding a
htmlviewer option to rustup or doc (if its a sub script like git uses).

Example usage
rustup doc --htmlview=lynx

If rustup has a config file for defaults I could use that also to lookup the default html viewer if set.

pdf/markdown/epub formats ?

Even with html converters this would likely in curry a maintenance penalty since converters may not be perfect.

Info pages

For a GNU based system the only alternative that would be supported universally would be supporting info page format but that is limited and really seems like a step back from html.

Deprecate local html documentation ?
If you don't want to modify rust to support alternate htmls viewers you may just want to move to only supporting documentation online, and remove rustup doc command eventually. While not ideal it could reduce the number of help tickets.

[carols10cents]

I have closed the issues because the fixes you're proposing need to be made with rustup, linux, firefox, snaps, something else. I can't fix any of this in the book repo. Please file issues elsewhere.

[carols10cents]

Please see rust-lang/rustup#2988 and the issues linked to it for possible solutions/workarounds. Please do not open new issues here; they will be closed.