$Id: INSTALL,v 1.3.2.1 2014/08/14 20:43:22 schwarze Exp $ About mdocml, the portable mandoc distribution ---------------------------------------------- The mandoc manpage compiler toolset is a suite of tools compiling mdoc(7), the roff(7) macro language of choice for BSD manual pages, and man(7), the predominant historical language for UNIX manuals. The toolset does not yet implement man(1); that is only scheduled for the next release, 1.13.2. It can, however, already serve to translate source manpages to the output displayed by man(1). For general information, see . In this document, we describe the installation and deployment of mandoc(1), first as a simple, standalone formatter, and then as part of the man(1) system. In case you have questions or want to provide feedback, read . Consider subscribing to the discuss@ mailing list mentioned on that page. If you intend to help with the development of mandoc, consider subscribing to the tech@ mailing list, too. Enjoy using the mandoc toolset! Ingo Schwarze, Karlsruhe, August 2014 Installation ------------ Before manually installing mandoc on your system, please check whether the newest version of mandoc is already installed by default or available via a binary package or a ports system. A list of the latest bundled and ported versions of mandoc for various operating systems is maintained at . If mandoc is installed, you can check the version by running "mandoc -V". The version contained in this distribution tarball is 1.12.4. This is not the newest version available, you can also get 1.13.1. Installing 1.12.4 only makes sense if all of the following conditions hold for you: - You need apropos(1) and makewhatis(8) functionality. - You do not need the man.cgi(8) web frontend. - You do have the Berkeley database library, version 1.85. - You lack at least one of the following: the SQLite3 database library and/or the fts(3) file hierarchy traversal functions. Regarding how packages and ports are maintained for your operating system, please consult your operating system documentation. To install mandoc manually, the following steps are needed: 1. Decide whether you want to build the base tools mandoc(1), preconv(1) and demandoc(1) only or whether you also want to build the database tools apropos(1) and makewhatis(8). For the latter, the Berkeley database system, version 1.85, is required. It is installed by default on BSD systems and available as an optional software package on other systems. 2. Read the beginning of the file "Makefile" from "USER SETTINGS" to "END OF USER SETTINGS" and edit it as required. In particular, disable "BUILD_TARGETS += db-build" if you do not want database support. 3. Run "make". No separate "./configure" or "make depend" steps are needed. The former is run automatically by "make". The latter is a maintainer target. If you merely want to build the released version as opposed to doing active development, there is no need to regenerate the dependency specifications. Any POSIX-compatible make, in particular both BSD make and GNU make, should work. 4. Run "make -n install" and check whether everything will be installed to the intended places. Otherwise, edit the *DIR variables in the Makefile until it is. 5. Run "sudo make install". If you intend to build a binary package using some kind of fake root mechanism, you may need a command like "make DESTDIR=... install". Read the *-install targets in the "Makefile" to understand how DESTDIR is used. 6. To use mandoc(1) as your man(1) formatter, read the "Deployment" section below. Checking autoconfiguration quality ---------------------------------- If you want to check whether automatic configuration works well on your platform, consider the following: The mandoc package intentionally does not use GNU autoconf because we consider that toolset a blatant example of overengineering that is obsolete nowadays, since all modern operating systems are now reasonably close to POSIX and do not need arcane shell magic any longer. If your system does need such magic, consider upgrading to reasonably modern POSIX-compliant tools rather than asking for autoconf-style workarounds. As far as mandoc is using any features not mandated by ANSI X3.159-1989 ("ANSI C") or IEEE Std 1003.1-2008 ("POSIX") that some modern systems do not have, we intend to provide autoconfiguration tests and compat_*.c implementations. Please report any that turn out to be missing. Note that while we do strive to produce portable code, we do not slavishly restrict ourselves to POSIX-only interfaces. For improved security and readability, we do use well-designed, modern interfaces like reallocarray(3) even if they are still rather uncommon, of course bundling compat_*.c implementations as needed. Where mandoc is using ANSI C or POSIX features that some systems still lack and that compat_*.c implementations can be provided for without too much hassle, we will consider adding them, too, so please report whatever is missing on your platform. The following steps can be used to manually check the automatic configuration on your platform: 1. Run "make clean". 2. Run "make config.h" 3. Read the file "config.log". It shows the compiler commands used to test the libraries installed on your system and the standard output and standard error output these commands produce. Watch out for unexpected failures. Those are most likely to happen if headers or libraries are installed in unusual places or interfaces defined in unusual headers. You can also look at the file "config.h" and check that no expected "#define HAVE_*" lines are missing. The list of tests run can be found in the file "configure". Deployment ---------- If you want to integrate the mandoc(1) tools with your existing man(1) system as a formatter, then contact us first: on systems without mandoc(1) as the default, you may have your work cut out for you! Usually, you can have your default installation and mandoc(1) work right alongside each other by using user-specific versions of the files mentioned below. 0. Back up each file you want to change! 1. First see whether your system has "/etc/man.conf" or "/etc/manpath.conf" (if it has neither, but man(1) is functional, then let us know) or, if running as your own user, a per-user override file. In either case, find where man(1) is executing nroff(1) or groff(1) to format manuals. Replace these calls with mandoc(1). 2. Then make sure that man(1) isn't running preprocessors, so you may need to replace tbl(1), eqn(1), and similar references with cat(1). Some man(1) implementations, like that on Mac OSX, let you run "man -d" to see how the formatter is invoked. Use this to test your changes. On Mac OS X, for instance, man(1) will prepend all files with ".ll" and ".nr" to set the terminal size, so you need to pass "tail -n+2 | mandoc(1)" to disregard them. 3. Finally, make sure that mandoc(1) is actually being invoked instead of cached pages being pulled up. You can usually do this by commenting out NOCACHE or similar. mandoc(1) still has a long way to go in understanding non-trivial low-level roff(7) markup embedded in some man(7) pages. On the BSD systems using mandoc(1), third-party software is generally vetted on whether it may be formatted with mandoc(1). If not, groff(1) is pulled in as a dependency and used to install a pre-formatted "catpage" intead of directly as manual page source. For more background on switching operating systems to use mandoc(1) instead of groff(1) to format manuals, see the two BSDCan presentations by Ingo Schwarze: