Re: [Man-db-devel] [PATCH v5] Add fallback pager if the compile time default is not executable

[Colin Watson]

On Sun, Jan 07, 2018 at 01:03:36PM -0800, address@hidden wrote:
> A problem with man-db's man is that in the case of the user giving no
> configuration via conf files, argv, or environment variables; man
> defaults to less as pager (PAGER); but less may not be present on the
> system. Sure, other pagers may be selected in aforementioned ways, but
> then the defaults are overrided, making that unsuitable for
> install-time configuration.
> 
> This patch makes man check (if that becomes relevant) if PAGER is
> executable, further defaulting to cat (which is basically ubiquitous,
> being in original Unix, POSIX, and GNU Coreutils) if it is not. Thus
> the poor beginner Unix users without less installed will  be able to
> get man pages.

Thanks for this!  I've pushed this to master, and added a couple of
follow-up cleanups.  Commits:

  
https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/man-db.git/commit/?id=b8428ce0ff42a715038fe578598e1d7d19c4fd35
  
https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/man-db.git/commit/?id=812a9b7c072a94e61fccb96c9e5e17a0fe93942a
  
https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/man-db.git/commit/?id=f77ab18c8a206efb893ad0adac909b5c98176cad

-- 
Colin Watson                                       address@hidden