Annotation of mandoc/INSTALL, Revision 1.3
1.3 ! schwarze 1: $Id: INSTALL,v 1.2 2014/08/10 17:22:26 schwarze Exp $
1.1 schwarze 2:
1.2 schwarze 3: About mdocml, the portable mandoc distribution
4: ----------------------------------------------
1.1 schwarze 5: The mandoc manpage compiler toolset is a suite of tools compiling
6: mdoc(7), the roff(7) macro language of choice for BSD manual pages,
7: and man(7), the predominant historical language for UNIX manuals.
1.2 schwarze 8: The toolset does not yet implement man(1); that is only scheduled
9: for the next release, 1.13.2. It can, however, already serve to
10: translate source manpages to the output displayed by man(1).
11: For general information, see <http://mdocml.bsd.lv/>.
12:
13: In this document, we describe the installation and deployment of
14: mandoc(1), first as a simple, standalone formatter, and then as part of
15: the man(1) system.
16:
17: In case you have questions or want to provide feedback, read
18: <http://mdocml.bsd.lv/contact.html>. Consider subscribing to the
19: discuss@ mailing list mentioned on that page. If you intend to
20: help with the development of mandoc, consider subscribing to the
21: tech@ mailing list, too.
22:
23: Enjoy using the mandoc toolset!
24:
25: Ingo Schwarze, Karlsruhe, August 2014
26:
1.1 schwarze 27:
1.2 schwarze 28: Installation
29: ------------
1.1 schwarze 30: Before manually installing mandoc on your system, please check
31: whether the newest version of mandoc is already installed by default
32: or available via a binary package or a ports system. A list of the
33: latest bundled and ported versions of mandoc for various operating
1.2 schwarze 34: systems is maintained at <http://mdocml.bsd.lv/ports.html>.
1.1 schwarze 35:
1.2 schwarze 36: If mandoc is installed, you can check the version by running "mandoc -V".
1.1 schwarze 37: The version contained in this distribution tarball is listed near
1.2 schwarze 38: the beginning of the file "Makefile".
1.1 schwarze 39:
1.2 schwarze 40: Regarding how packages and ports are maintained for your operating
41: system, please consult your operating system documentation.
42: To install mandoc manually, the following steps are needed:
1.1 schwarze 43:
1.2 schwarze 44: 1. Decide whether you want to build the base tools mandoc(1),
45: preconv(1) and demandoc(1) only or whether you also want to build the
46: database tools apropos(1) and makewhatis(8). For the latter,
47: the following dependencies are required:
1.1 schwarze 48:
1.2 schwarze 49: 1.1. The SQLite database system, see <http://sqlite.org/>.
1.1 schwarze 50: The recommended version of SQLite is 3.8.4.3 or newer. The mandoc
51: toolset is known to work with version 3.7.5 or newer. Versions
52: older than 3.8.3 may not achieve full performance due to the
53: missing SQLITE_DETERMINISTIC optimization flag. Versions older
54: than 3.8.0 may not show full error information if opening a database
55: fails due to the missing sqlite3_errstr() API. Both are very minor
1.2 schwarze 56: problems, apropos(1) is fully usable with SQLite 3.7.5. Versions
57: older than 3.7.5 may or may not work, they have not been tested.
58:
59: 1.2. The fts(3) directory traversion functions.
1.3 ! schwarze 60: If your system does not have them, the bundled compatibility version
! 61: will be used, so you need not worry in that case. But be careful: the
1.2 schwarze 62: glibc version of fts(3) is known to be broken on 32bit platforms,
63: see <https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=15838>.
64:
65: 1.3. Marc Espie's ohash(3) library.
66: If your system does not have it, the bundled compatibility version
1.1 schwarze 67: will be used, so you probably need not worry about it.
68:
69: 2. If you choose to build the database tools, too, decide whether
70: you also want to build the CGI program, man.cgi(8).
71:
72: 3. Read the beginning of the file "Makefile" from "USER SETTINGS"
73: to "END OF USER SETTINGS" and edit it as required. In particular,
74: disable "BUILD_TARGETS += db-build" if you do not want database
75: support or enable "BUILD_TARGETS += cgi-build" if you do want
76: the CGI program.
77:
1.2 schwarze 78: 4. Run "make". No separate "./configure" or "make depend" steps
79: are needed. The former is run automatically by "make". The latter
80: is a maintainer target. If you merely want to build the released
81: version as opposed to doing active development, there is no need
82: to regenerate the dependency specifications. Any POSIX-compatible
83: make, in particular both BSD make and GNU make, should work.
84:
85: 5. Run "make -n install" and check whether everything will be
86: installed to the intended places. Otherwise, edit the *DIR variables
87: in the Makefile until it is.
1.1 schwarze 88:
1.2 schwarze 89: 6. Run "sudo make install". If you intend to build a binary
1.1 schwarze 90: package using some kind of fake root mechanism, you may need a
91: command like "make DESTDIR=... install". Read the *-install targets
92: in the "Makefile" to understand how DESTDIR is used.
93:
1.2 schwarze 94: 7. To set up a man.cgi(8) server, read its manual page.
95:
96: 8. To use mandoc(1) as your man(1) formatter, read the "Deployment"
97: section below.
98:
1.1 schwarze 99:
1.2 schwarze 100: Checking autoconfiguration quality
101: ----------------------------------
1.1 schwarze 102: If you want to check whether automatic configuration works well
103: on your platform, consider the following:
104:
105: The mandoc package intentionally does not use GNU autoconf because
106: we consider that toolset a blatant example of overengineering that
107: is obsolete nowadays, since all modern operating systems are now
108: reasonably close to POSIX and do not need arcane shell magic any
109: longer. If your system does need such magic, consider upgrading
110: to reasonably modern POSIX-compliant tools rather than asking for
111: autoconf-style workarounds.
112:
113: As far as mandoc is using any features not mandated by ANSI X3.159-1989
114: ("ANSI C") or IEEE Std 1003.1-2008 ("POSIX") that some modern systems
115: do not have, we intend to provide autoconfiguration tests and
116: compat_*.c implementations. Please report any that turn out to be
117: missing. Note that while we do strive to produce portable code,
118: we do not slavishly restrict ourselves to POSIX-only interfaces.
119: For improved security and readability, we do use well-designed,
120: modern interfaces like reallocarray(3) even if they are still rather
121: uncommon, of course bundling compat_*.c implementations as needed.
122:
123: Where mandoc is using ANSI C or POSIX features that some systems
124: still lack and that compat_*.c implementations can be provided for
125: without too much hassle, we will consider adding them, too, so
126: please report whatever is missing on your platform.
127:
128: The following steps can be used to manually check the automatic
129: configuration on your platform:
130:
131: 1. Run "make clean".
132:
133: 2. Run "make config.h"
134:
135: 3. Read the file "config.log". It shows the compiler commands used
136: to test the libraries installed on your system and the standard
137: output and standard error output these commands produce. Watch out
138: for unexpected failures. Those are most likely to happen if headers
139: or libraries are installed in unusual places or interfaces defined
140: in unusual headers. You can also look at the file "config.h" and
141: check that no expected "#define HAVE_*" lines are missing. The
142: list of tests run can be found in the file "configure".
143:
144:
1.2 schwarze 145: Deployment
146: ----------
147: If you want to integrate the mandoc(1) tools with your existing
148: man(1) system as a formatter, then contact us first: on systems without
149: mandoc(1) as the default, you may have your work cut out for you!
150: Usually, you can have your default installation and mandoc(1) work right
151: alongside each other by using user-specific versions of the files
152: mentioned below.
153:
154: 0. Back up each file you want to change!
155:
156: 1. First see whether your system has "/etc/man.conf" or "/etc/manpath.conf"
157: (if it has neither, but man(1) is functional, then let us know) or,
158: if running as your own user, a per-user override file. In either
159: case, find where man(1) is executing nroff(1) or groff(1) to format
160: manuals. Replace these calls with mandoc(1).
161:
162: 2. Then make sure that man(1) isn't running preprocessors, so you may
163: need to replace tbl(1), eqn(1), and similar references with cat(1).
164: Some man(1) implementations, like that on Mac OSX, let you run "man -d"
165: to see how the formatter is invoked. Use this to test your changes. On
166: Mac OS X, for instance, man(1) will prepend all files with ".ll" and
167: ".nr" to set the terminal size, so you need to pass "tail -n+2 |
168: mandoc(1)" to disregard them.
169:
170: 3. Finally, make sure that mandoc(1) is actually being invoked instead
171: of cached pages being pulled up. You can usually do this by commenting
172: out NOCACHE or similar.
173:
174: mandoc(1) still has a long way to go in understanding non-trivial
175: low-level roff(7) markup embedded in some man(7) pages. On the BSD
176: systems using mandoc(1), third-party software is generally vetted
177: on whether it may be formatted with mandoc(1). If not, groff(1)
178: is pulled in as a dependency and used to install a pre-formatted
179: "catpage" intead of directly as manual page source.
180:
181: For more background on switching operating systems to use mandoc(1)
182: instead of groff(1) to format manuals, see the two BSDCan presentations
183: by Ingo Schwarze:
184: <http://www.openbsd.org/papers/bsdcan11-mandoc-openbsd.html>
185: <http://www.openbsd.org/papers/bsdcan14-mandoc.pdf>
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