.\"	$Id: man.conf.5,v 1.1 2015/03/27 00:18:14 schwarze Exp $
.\"
.\" Copyright (c) 2015 Ingo Schwarze <schwarze@openbsd.org>
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.Dd $Mdocdate: March 27 2015 $
.Dt MAN.CONF 5
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm man.conf
.Nd configuration file for man(1)
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The
.Nm
configuration file allows to specify non-standard directory trees
for use by the
.Xr man 1 ,
.Xr apropos 1 ,
and
.Xr makewhatis 8
utilities.
Its presence and all directives are optional.
.Pp
This file is an ASCII text file.
Leading whitespace on lines, lines starting with
.Sq # ,
and blank lines are ignored.
Words are separated by whitespace.
The first word on each line is the name of a configuration directive.
.Pp
The following directives are supported:
.Bl -tag -width Ds
.It Ic manpath Ar path
Specify that the absolute
.Ar path
contains a tree of manual pages, and that
.Xr man 1 ,
.Xr apropos 1 ,
and
.Xr makewhatis 8
shall use it by default.
Each such tree is supposed to contain subdirectories
whose names consist of the strings
.Sq man
and/or
.Sq cat
followed by the names of sections, usually single digits.
The former are supposed to contain unformatted manual pages in
.Xr mdoc 7
and/or
.Xr man 7
format; file names are supposed to end with the name of the section
preceded by a dot.
The latter are supposed to contain preformatted manual pages;
file names are supposed to end with
.Ql .0 .
Creating a
.Xr mandoc.db 5
database with
.Xr makewhatis 8
in each directory configured with
.Ic manpath
is recommended and necessary for
.Xr apropos 1
to work, but not strictly required for
.Xr man 1 .
.Pp
Specifying at least one
.Ic manpath
directive does not append to the default search path
but instead overrides it.
The order of
.Ic manpath
directives determines the manual page search order.
.It Ic _whatdb Ar path Ns Cm /whatis.db
This directive provides the same functionality as
.Ic manpath ,
but using a historic and misleading syntax.
It is kept for backward compatibility for now,
but will eventually be removed.
.El
.Sh FILES
.Pa /etc/man.conf
.Sh EXAMPLES
The following configuration file reproduces the defaults:
Installing it is equivalent to not having a file
.Nm
at all.
.Bd -literal -offset indent
manpath /usr/share/man
manpath /usr/X11R6/man
manpath /usr/local/man
.Ed
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr apropos 1 ,
.Xr man 1 ,
.Xr makewhatis 8
.Sh HISTORY
A relatively complicated
.Nm
file format first appeared in
.Bx 4.3 Reno .
For
.Ox 5.8 ,
it was redesigned from scratch, aiming for simplicity.
.Sh AUTHORS
.An Ingo Schwarze Aq Mt schwarze@openbsd.org