1 README for the man-db manual pager suite
2 ========================================
4 Please read the man-db manual, included in the manual subdirectory of this
5 distribution. It contains configuration details and other aspects of this
6 manual pager suite that are not duplicated or relevant in this README.
7 Check manual/README for details of the formatters required.
9 Read docs/INSTALL.autoconf for generic options to configure.
10 Read docs/INSTALL.quick if you know all about man-db.
11 Read NEWS for visible changes since the last public release.
12 Read ChangeLog for details of recent source code changes.
13 Read docs/TODO for future plans.
15 The C source requires an ANSI C compiler.
18 Copyright and licensing
19 =======================
21 Copyright (C) 1990, 1991 John W. Eaton.
22 Copyright (C) 1994, 1995 Markus Armbruster.
23 Copyright (C) 1994, 1995 Graeme W. Wilford. (Wilf.)
24 Copyright (C) 1995 Carl Edman.
25 Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 2000 Fabrizio Polacco.
26 Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010,
27 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 Colin Watson.
28 Copyright (C) 1984, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999,
29 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009,
30 2010, 2011, 2012 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
32 man-db is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
33 under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
34 the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
35 (at your option) any later version.
37 man-db is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
38 WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
39 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
40 GNU General Public License for more details.
42 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
43 along with man-db; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation,
44 Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA
46 In addition, man-db incorporates Gnulib, copyrighted by the Free Software
47 Foundation and others. Note that much of Gnulib is distributed under the GNU
48 General Public License version 3 or later. This means that, although
49 man-db's own source code is licensed under GPL v2 or later, the work as a
50 whole falls under the terms of the GPL v3 or later. Unless you take special
51 pains to remove the GPL v3 portions, you must therefore follow the terms and
52 conditions of the GPL v3 or later when distributing man-db.
55 Notice regarding current state of FHS (Linux/?BSD)
56 ==================================================
58 As of May 13th, 2001, the last public release of the Filesystem Hierarchy
59 Standard proposed the root of the manual page hierarchy as `/usr/share' and
60 the root of the writable cat hierarchy as `/var/cache/man' for the purposes
61 of man->cat filename translation. As such, the following are defined in
62 ./include/manconfig.h.in:
64 #define FHS_CAT_ROOT "/var/cache/man" /* required by fsstnd() */
65 #define FHS_MAN_ROOT "/usr/share" /* required by fsstnd() */
67 For compatibility with the old FSSTND, the following locations are also
70 #define CAT_ROOT "/var/catman" /* required by fsstnd() */
71 #define MAN_ROOT "/usr" /* required by fsstnd() */
73 Should these locations change, simply define the paths accordingly and
74 recompile. Other FHS changes relating to man/cat paths will not be
75 compatible with this version of man-db.
77 Non-generic arguments to configure
78 ==================================
80 To allow the configuration program, configure, to be non-interactive, it can
81 be passed various options to alter the default settings. Generic configure
82 options are discussed in docs/INSTALL.autoconf. The following list of
83 options is extracted from the man-db manual. It is strongly recommended
84 that relevant sections of the manual are read if any of these options are
87 --enable-cache-owner[=ARG]
88 By default, system-wide cache files will be owned by user man. Use this
89 option with an argument to change the cache file owner.
92 Use this option to leave the ownership of system-wide cache files
93 unconstrained. Users will be allowed to modify them.
96 By default, man will be installed as a setuid program to the user that
97 owns the system-wide cache files. Use this option to install man as a
98 non-setuid program instead.
101 By default, man-db supports manual page directories in any of several
102 layouts used by free and proprietary versions of UNIX. However, in
103 certain cases, this can cause man-db to find the wrong page by mistake,
104 especially when the names of some manual pages on the system contain
105 periods. Use this option with an argument of GNU, HPUX, IRIX, Solaris,
106 or BSD (or more than one of these, separated by commas) to support only
107 the layouts typically used on each of those systems. Note that man-db is
108 not currently capable of writing cat pages in the proper BSD layout.
111 Use this flag to alter the default output device used by NROFF. DEVICE is
112 passed to NROFF with the -T option. configure will test that NROFF will
113 run with the supplied device argument.
116 configure will look for database interface libraries in the order gdbm,
117 Berkeley DB and finally ndbm and will #define appropriate variables
118 relative to the first one found. To override the built-in order on
119 platforms having a choice of interface library, use this option to
120 specify which library to use.
122 --enable-automatic-create
123 If this flag is used, man will automatically create index databases for
124 users' private manual page hierarchies.
126 --disable-automatic-update
127 Normally, man will update entries in index databases if it finds newly
128 installed manual pages (if the --update flag is used) or delete entries
129 if manual pages are removed. This flag suppresses this behaviour.
132 Normally, man will automatically try to create cat files corresponding to
133 manual files when a manual page is read. This flag suppresses this
137 Don't build or install the man-db manual. This may be useful when
138 cross-compiling, or to reduce the installation size.
146 * READ `docs/INSTALL.autoconf' regarding ./configure options
148 * RUN `./configure --help' to see what --enable and --with
149 options may be useful.
151 * RUN `./configure' with the appropriate options and environment
154 BROWSE or EDIT the following files that were created by the configuration
157 * `include/manconfig.h' regarding paths to support programs,
158 the default section list and other specific definitions.
160 * `include/comp_src.h' if the default compressor support is
161 inadequate for your requirements. (usually .Z [compress],
164 configure will determine your system's ability to use native language
165 support (NLS) message catalogues. You may set the environment variable
166 LINGUAS to limit the set of translations installed. LINGUAS should contain
167 a space-separated list of two-letter language identifiers. To compile
168 man-db with no support for message catalogues, simply pass the --disable-nls
169 option to configure. N.B. This is not related to man's ability to display
170 NLS manual pages, support for which is compiled in by default.
174 * RUN `make' to compile man-db with the set of translations chosen
175 when running `./configure'.
177 Sort out the man-db configuration file.
179 * RUN `./src/man -l man/man5/manpath.5' from the root of this
180 distribution to read the man-db configuration file details.
182 * EDIT `./src/man_db.conf' to your local requirements.
186 * (gain superuser privileges for the rest of the steps)
188 * RUN `make install' to install the utilities and manual pages.
190 Initialise the `index' databases for all manpaths marked as global in the
191 man-db configuration file.
193 * RUN `mandb' (This step is equivalent to running straycats and
196 The following steps are optional / dependent on local conventions.
198 * ACKNOWLEDGE any warnings emitted by mandb. Bogus manual pages
199 are not included in the database and may be a waste of space.
200 Those pages without correctly formatted `whatis' lines are
201 included, but will have a whatis entry of "(unknown)"
203 * CD tools and RUN `mkcatdirs -t' to see if you have all of the
204 required cat directories. `mkcatdirs' without an option will
205 display a usage message.
207 * CD tools and RUN `checkman' with an argument of colon separated
208 manual page hierarchies to cross check for duplicated manual
209 pages. If no argument is given, your default $MANPATH will be
212 The output of checkman may be piped into a file and used as an
213 argument to `rm', the `is newer than' messages are directed to
214 standard error. e.g. `checkman > dups'
216 If you are confident that the duplicates found are indeed
217 duplicates, you can back them up and delete them to save space.
219 At this point, running checkman again may yield further duplicates
220 that were ignored the first time.
222 * RUN `catman' with appropriate options to create any/all cat files
223 that you would like pre-formatted.
226 Multiple build directories
227 ==========================
229 It is possible to build man-db in a directory other than the directory
230 containing this file (and all of the program sources). This is particularly
231 useful if compiling on multiple architectures or testing various
232 configuration options as only a single copy of the sources is required.
234 To enable this support, simply change directory to where you would like to
235 build the package and run the configure program in this directory
236 *from there*. Further information about this support can be found in the
237 generic install document `docs/INSTALL.autoconf'.
240 Makefile targets and variables
241 ==============================
243 The standard GNU Makefile targets: all, install, uninstall, mostlyclean,
244 clean, distclean, realclean and TAGS are available in every Makefile-
245 supported directory. In addition, the master Makefile has the dist target
246 to create a compressed and tarred distribution file.
248 During the configuration process, `configure' sets the installation
249 variables, `prefix' and `exec_prefix'. These are then used to form other
250 variables such as `bindir' and `sysconfdir'. To change any of these or
251 other standard GNU install variables dynamically, issue the `make' command
252 with variable expressions as arguments, eg. `make prefix=/usr/local/packages'
254 N.B. If prefix=/usr (either statically or dynamically), then sysconfdir=/etc
255 instead of the usual $(prefix)/etc. To force sysconfdir to be /usr/etc, set
256 it on the make command line.
259 Default preprocessors
260 =====================
262 man-db uses a manual page directed preprocessor system, that is, each manual
263 page may request preprocessing by a selection of preprocessors. Some
264 systems' manual pages do not come with this information built in. In such
265 circumstances, it is advisable to set a default list of preprocessors that
266 each manual page should be passed through, so that those requiring special
267 processing are readable. To achieve this, set DEFAULT_MANROFFSEQ (found in
268 include/manconfig.h) to the appropriate preprocessor string, after running
269 configure, but prior to compilation. This is not necessary for the
270 following systems whose default preprocessing requirements are known.
272 Known not to require DEFAULT_MANROFFSEQ:
274 Known to require #define DEFAULT_MANROFFSEQ "t":
276 Known to require #define DEFAULT_MANROFFSEQ "te":
279 If unsure of the default preprocessors required by a system, the standard
280 system's man(1) manual page may provide an answer.
283 Contacting the maintainer
284 =========================
286 The current maintainer of man-db is Colin Watson <cjwatson@debian.org>.
287 Please feel free to contact me with any queries or problems you may have.
288 You can report bugs here:
290 https://savannah.nongnu.org/bugs/?group=man-db