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Date:      Thu, 13 Dec 2001 10:14:01 +0200
From:      Ruslan Ermilov <ru@FreeBSD.ORG>
To:        Garance A Drosihn <drosih@rpi.edu>
Cc:        Peter Wemm <peter@wemm.org>, Nik Clayton <nik@FreeBSD.ORG>, Greg Lehey <grog@FreeBSD.ORG>, Warner Losh <imp@harmony.village.org>, ache@FreeBSD.ORG, freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Changing 'man' to check alternate destination for 'cat' pages
Message-ID:  <20011213101401.C77774@sunbay.com>
In-Reply-To: <p0510100bb83ddfa9e683@[128.113.24.47]>
References:  <20011212001610.9AEA739EA@overcee.netplex.com.au> <p0510100bb83ddfa9e683@[128.113.24.47]>

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On Thu, Dec 13, 2001 at 12:01:03AM -0500, Garance A Drosihn wrote:
> From the thread
>    Re: Getting rid of /usr file system (was: Using a larger block size...)
> 
> > > On Tue, Dec 11, 2001, Garance A Drosihn wrote:
> > > > In the land of weird suggestions, just how weird would it be to
> >> > suggest that we create some way for 'cat' versions of man pages
> >> > to land somewhere else?
> > > >
> > > > Maybe /var/man/usr/share/cat*
> >> > for ones from /usr/share/man/man*
> > > > etc?
> 
> Given that Peter, Nik, and Greg expressed some interest, I thought it might
> be interesting to try my hand at doing it.  I looked at it for about 15
> minutes tonight, and noticed that 'man' is under gnu/usr.bin.  Does that
> imply changes for it should go thru gnu, somehow?    <<shudder>>
> 
No.

> I noticed there are some changes to 'man' in release 5 which haven't been
> MFC'ed yet.  Would there be any reason those should not be MFC'ed?
> 
Some of them can't be MFC'ed, some can be.  Please be specific.  :-)

> Should I try my hand at implementing my idea, or is someone else already
> looking into it?
> 
Sorry, but I don't quite understand what are you looking at.
We already have a manpath(1) facility, that could be used
to configure alternate manual pathes.  Is that not sufficient?

> While I haven't tried writing any code yet, my intent is that
> 'man <thing>' would do something like:
> 
>      search for the requested man page (same as it does now)
>      once it finds the location, then
>   +      look for a 'cat' page at /<matchedpath>/cat/thing.n,
>   +          if found, use it
>          look for a 'cat' page at /var/man/<matchedpath>/cat/thing.n,
>              if found, use it
>   +      see if /var/man/<matchedpath>/cat is an existing directory,
>   +          if so, then put the expanded 'man' page into that directory.
>          otherwise put it in /<matchedpath>/cat (as happens now)
> 
> Does this sound about how people would want it to work?  Basically the
> idea is that it would work exactly the same as it does now, except for
> the steps with a '+' on them.  So, to get this alternate behavior people
> would have to create the appropriate directories under /var/man (or
> perhaps some other name), such as:
>     /var/man/usr/share/man/cat*
>     /var/man/usr/local/man/cat*
>     /var/man/usr/X11R6/man/cat*
> 
> I haven't done any work on this yet, I'm just looking for feedback.
> 
What's the goal of doing this?  I missed the original thread.


Cheers,
-- 
Ruslan Ermilov		Oracle Developer/DBA,
ru@sunbay.com		Sunbay Software AG,
ru@FreeBSD.org		FreeBSD committer,
+380.652.512.251	Simferopol, Ukraine

http://www.FreeBSD.org	The Power To Serve
http://www.oracle.com	Enabling The Information Age

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