Re: [Groff] Unix Man Pages

[John Poltorak]

On Sun, Mar 09, 2003 at 06:59:41PM +0000, Colin Watson wrote:

> The other (which I maintain nowadays) is:
> 
>   http://www.nongnu.org/man-db/
> 
> The most onerous of its requirements will probably be Berkeley DB,

Which version of Berkeley DB is required?

> although GNU DBM or traditional DBM should work too. The other one
> (maintained by Andries Brouwer) probably has fewer dependencies, as it
> uses a flat-text whatis database rather than a database library. Last
> time I looked the makewhatis script that built that database was a
> shell/awk script.
> 
> > I'm not using a Unix environment, and have been unable to build MAN, 
> > although I can build GROFF straight from the tarball without any problems.
> > Is MAN much more closely linked to Unix rather than being geared up for 
> > being built in a cross platform environment?
> 
> I don't know about Andries Brouwer's man, but it would not surprise me
> in the slightest if man-db had several Unix assumptions. Certainly I've
> never heard any non-Unix people expressing an interest in it before. I'd
> be willing to work with you (private mail, I guess) to iron out those
> assumptions if you can bring me sufficiently up to speed with your
> environment.


I'm using OS/2 but have found that many, at least recently released, GNU 
apps cater very well to OS's which use DOS-like filesystems, ie. have 
drive letters, and use different pathseps(;), and dirseps(\) and 
executable exectensions of .EXE.  New versions of the GNU Build System 
allow apps such as GROFF to build on OS/2 straight out of the box without 
the need for applying any patches. 


Can this man-db be used automatically as part of a standard install of an 
app which creates man pages or is an additional step required? 

> Cheers,
> 
> -- 
> Colin Watson                                  address@hidden



-- 
John