Hi,
i'm moving this thread from misc@ to tech@ because i propose a patch.
When replying, please make sure you do not cross-post.
Jérémie Courrèges-Anglas wrote on Fri, Jul 12, 2013 at 02:05:48PM +0200:
> Jan Stary <h...@stare.cz> writes:
>> The mdoc(7) manpage says about .Bl that
>>
>> The -width and -offset arguments accept scaling widths
>> as described in roff(7) or use the length of the given string.
>>
>> The words "width" or "offset" do not appear anywhere in roff(7).
> You're looking at the roff(7) manpage that comes with groff.
> Your pager probably prints "/usr/local/man/cat7/roff.0" at the
> bottom of your screen.
To find out how man(1) resolves your query string to a manual page file,
you can also use
$ man -w roff
/usr/local/man/cat7/roff.0
/usr/share/man/man7/roff.7
Without the -w, man(1) will display the first one.
That's the ordering resulting from the default man.conf(5):
ports override the base system.
I consider that a bug, thanks for reporting it!
> You could use man -a and then enter ":n" to get the base manpage.
Much easier:
$ man 7 roff
...
Doubtless, now you wonder why explicitly specifying the section
gives you the other (correct) ordering, but indeed it does:
$ man -w 7 roff
/usr/share/man/man7/roff.7
/usr/local/man/cat7/roff.0
To understand what's going on here, let's look at the default
file /etc/man.conf. When explicitly specifying the section,
the following entry takes effect:
7 /usr/{share,X11R6,local}/man/{cat,man}7
That expands to, as it should:
/usr/share/man/cat7
/usr/share/man/man7
/usr/X11R6/man/cat7
/usr/X11R6/man/man7
/usr/local/man/cat7
/usr/local/man/man7
When not specifying the section, the following entries take effect:
_subdir ... cat7 man7 ...
_default /usr/{share,X11R6,local,ports/infrastructure}/man/
That *first* expands to
/usr/{share,X11R6,local,ports/infrastructure}/man/cat7
/usr/{share,X11R6,local,ports/infrastructure}/man/man7
and *then* to
/usr/share/man/cat7
/usr/X11R6/man/cat7
/usr/local/man/cat7
/usr/ports/infrastructure/man/cat7
/usr/share/man/man7
/usr/X11R6/man/man7
/usr/local/man/man7
/usr/ports/infrastructure/man/man7
which is the wrong ordering.
Here is the fix, making sure that section 1 from ports still
overrides section 6 from base, but cat from ports does *not*
override man from base.
OK?
Yours,
Ingo
Index: man.conf
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvs/src/etc/man.conf,v
retrieving revision 1.17
diff -u -r1.17 man.conf
--- man.conf 11 Apr 2011 14:45:41 -0000 1.17
+++ man.conf 12 Jul 2013 15:25:14 -0000
@@ -9,7 +9,7 @@
_whatdb /usr/X11R6/man/whatis.db
# Subdirectories for paths ending in '/', IN SEARCH ORDER.
-_subdir cat1 man1 cat8 man8 cat6 man6 cat2 man2 cat3 man3 cat5
man5 cat7 man7 cat4 man4 cat9 man9 cat3p man3p cat3f man3f catn mann
+_subdir {cat,man}1 {cat,man}8 {cat,man}6 {cat,man}2 {cat,man}3
{cat,man}5 {cat,man}7 {cat,man}4 {cat,man}9 {cat,man}3p {cat,man}3f {cat,man}n
# Files typed by suffix and their commands.
# Note the order: .Z must come after .[1-9n].Z, or it will match first.
