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Annotation of mandoc/INSTALL, Revision 1.4

1.4     ! schwarze    1: $Id: INSTALL,v 1.3 2014/08/11 01:39:00 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".
1.4     ! schwarze   37: You can find the version contained in this distribution tarball
        !            38: by running "./configure".
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:
1.4     ! schwarze   44: 1. If you want to build the CGI program, man.cgi(8), too, run the
        !            45: command "echo BUILD_CGI=1 > configure.local".
1.1       schwarze   46:
1.4     ! schwarze   47: 2. Run "./configure".
        !            48: This script attempts autoconfiguration of mandoc for your system.
        !            49: Read both its standard output and the file "Makefile.local" it
        !            50: generates.  If anything looks wrong or different from what you
        !            51: wish, read the file "configure.local.example", create and edit
        !            52: a file "configure.local", and re-run "./configure" until the
        !            53: result seems right to you.
        !            54:
        !            55: 3. Run "make".
        !            56: Any POSIX-compatible make, in particular both BSD make and GNU make,
        !            57: should work.  If the build fails, look at "configure.local.example"
        !            58: and go back to step 2.
        !            59:
        !            60: 4. Run "make -n install" and check whether everything will be
        !            61: installed to the intended places.  Otherwise, put some *DIR variables
        !            62: into "configure.local" and go back to step 2.
        !            63:
        !            64: 5. Run "sudo make install".  If you intend to build a binary
        !            65: package using some kind of fake root mechanism, you may need a
        !            66: command like "make DESTDIR=... install".  Read the *-install targets
        !            67: in the "Makefile" to understand how DESTDIR is used.
        !            68:
        !            69: 6. To set up a man.cgi(8) server, read its manual page.
        !            70:
        !            71: 7. To use mandoc(1) as your man(1) formatter, read the "Deployment"
        !            72: section below.
        !            73:
        !            74:
        !            75: Understanding mandoc dependencies
        !            76: ---------------------------------
        !            77: The mandoc(1), preconv(1), and demandoc(1) utilities have no external
        !            78: dependencies.  However, makewhatis(8) and apropos(1) depend on the
        !            79: following software:
        !            80:
        !            81: 1. The SQLite database system, see <http://sqlite.org/>.
1.1       schwarze   82: The recommended version of SQLite is 3.8.4.3 or newer.  The mandoc
                     83: toolset is known to work with version 3.7.5 or newer.  Versions
                     84: older than 3.8.3 may not achieve full performance due to the
                     85: missing SQLITE_DETERMINISTIC optimization flag.  Versions older
                     86: than 3.8.0 may not show full error information if opening a database
                     87: fails due to the missing sqlite3_errstr() API.  Both are very minor
1.2       schwarze   88: problems, apropos(1) is fully usable with SQLite 3.7.5.  Versions
                     89: older than 3.7.5 may or may not work, they have not been tested.
                     90:
                     91: 1.2. The fts(3) directory traversion functions.
1.3       schwarze   92: If your system does not have them, the bundled compatibility version
                     93: will be used, so you need not worry in that case.  But be careful: the
1.2       schwarze   94: glibc version of fts(3) is known to be broken on 32bit platforms,
                     95: see <https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=15838>.
1.4     ! schwarze   96: If you run into that problem, set "HAVE_FTS=0" in configure.local.
1.2       schwarze   97:
                     98: 1.3. Marc Espie's ohash(3) library.
                     99: If your system does not have it, the bundled compatibility version
1.1       schwarze  100: will be used, so you probably need not worry about it.
                    101:
                    102:
1.2       schwarze  103: Checking autoconfiguration quality
                    104: ----------------------------------
1.1       schwarze  105: If you want to check whether automatic configuration works well
                    106: on your platform, consider the following:
                    107:
                    108: The mandoc package intentionally does not use GNU autoconf because
                    109: we consider that toolset a blatant example of overengineering that
                    110: is obsolete nowadays, since all modern operating systems are now
                    111: reasonably close to POSIX and do not need arcane shell magic any
                    112: longer.  If your system does need such magic, consider upgrading
                    113: to reasonably modern POSIX-compliant tools rather than asking for
                    114: autoconf-style workarounds.
                    115:
                    116: As far as mandoc is using any features not mandated by ANSI X3.159-1989
                    117: ("ANSI C") or IEEE Std 1003.1-2008 ("POSIX") that some modern systems
                    118: do not have, we intend to provide autoconfiguration tests and
                    119: compat_*.c implementations.  Please report any that turn out to be
                    120: missing.  Note that while we do strive to produce portable code,
                    121: we do not slavishly restrict ourselves to POSIX-only interfaces.
                    122: For improved security and readability, we do use well-designed,
                    123: modern interfaces like reallocarray(3) even if they are still rather
                    124: uncommon, of course bundling compat_*.c implementations as needed.
                    125:
                    126: Where mandoc is using ANSI C or POSIX features that some systems
                    127: still lack and that compat_*.c implementations can be provided for
                    128: without too much hassle, we will consider adding them, too, so
                    129: please report whatever is missing on your platform.
                    130:
                    131: The following steps can be used to manually check the automatic
                    132: configuration on your platform:
                    133:
1.4     ! schwarze  134: 1. Run "make distclean".
1.1       schwarze  135:
1.4     ! schwarze  136: 2. Run "./configure"
1.1       schwarze  137:
                    138: 3. Read the file "config.log".  It shows the compiler commands used
                    139: to test the libraries installed on your system and the standard
                    140: output and standard error output these commands produce.  Watch out
                    141: for unexpected failures.  Those are most likely to happen if headers
                    142: or libraries are installed in unusual places or interfaces defined
                    143: in unusual headers.  You can also look at the file "config.h" and
1.4     ! schwarze  144: check that no "#define HAVE_*" differ from your expectations.
1.1       schwarze  145:
                    146:
1.2       schwarze  147: Deployment
                    148: ----------
                    149: If you want to integrate the mandoc(1) tools with your existing
                    150: man(1) system as a formatter, then contact us first: on systems without
                    151: mandoc(1) as the default, you may have your work cut out for you!
                    152: Usually, you can have your default installation and mandoc(1) work right
                    153: alongside each other by using user-specific versions of the files
                    154: mentioned below.
                    155:
                    156: 0. Back up each file you want to change!
                    157:
                    158: 1. First see whether your system has "/etc/man.conf" or "/etc/manpath.conf"
                    159: (if it has neither, but man(1) is functional, then let us know) or,
                    160: if running as your own user, a per-user override file.  In either
                    161: case, find where man(1) is executing nroff(1) or groff(1) to format
                    162: manuals.  Replace these calls with mandoc(1).
                    163:
                    164: 2. Then make sure that man(1) isn't running preprocessors, so you may
                    165: need to replace tbl(1), eqn(1), and similar references with cat(1).
                    166: Some man(1) implementations, like that on Mac OSX, let you run "man -d"
                    167: to see how the formatter is invoked.  Use this to test your changes.  On
                    168: Mac OS X, for instance, man(1) will prepend all files with ".ll" and
                    169: ".nr" to set the terminal size, so you need to pass "tail -n+2 |
                    170: mandoc(1)" to disregard them.
                    171:
                    172: 3. Finally, make sure that mandoc(1) is actually being invoked instead
                    173: of cached pages being pulled up.  You can usually do this by commenting
                    174: out NOCACHE or similar.
                    175:
                    176: mandoc(1) still has a long way to go in understanding non-trivial
                    177: low-level roff(7) markup embedded in some man(7) pages.  On the BSD
                    178: systems using mandoc(1), third-party software is generally vetted
                    179: on whether it may be formatted with mandoc(1).  If not, groff(1)
                    180: is pulled in as a dependency and used to install a pre-formatted
                    181: "catpage" intead of directly as manual page source.
                    182:
                    183: For more background on switching operating systems to use mandoc(1)
                    184: instead of groff(1) to format manuals, see the two BSDCan presentations
                    185: by Ingo Schwarze:
                    186: <http://www.openbsd.org/papers/bsdcan11-mandoc-openbsd.html>
                    187: <http://www.openbsd.org/papers/bsdcan14-mandoc.pdf>

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