INSTALL

   1 $Id: INSTALL,v 1.21 2018/07/31 10:18:15 schwarze Exp $
   2
   3 About the portable mandoc distribution
   4 --------------------------------------
   5 The mandoc manpage compiler toolset (formerly called "mdocml")
   6 is a suite of tools compiling mdoc(7), the roff(7) macro language
   7 of choice for BSD manual pages, and man(7), the predominant
   8 historical language for UNIX manuals.
   9
  10 It includes a man(1) manual viewer and additional tools.
  11 For general information, see <http://mandoc.bsd.lv/>.
  12
  13 In case you have questions or want to provide feedback, read
  14 <http://mandoc.bsd.lv/contact.html>.  Consider subscribing to the
  15 discuss@ mailing list mentioned on that page.  If you intend to
  16 help with the development of mandoc, consider subscribing to the
  17 tech@ mailing list, too.
  18
  19 Enjoy using the mandoc toolset!
  20
  21 Ingo Schwarze, Karlsruhe, August 2018
  22
  23
  24 Installation
  25 ------------
  26 Before manually installing mandoc on your system, please check
  27 whether the newest version of mandoc is already installed by default
  28 or available via a binary package or a ports system.  A list of the
  29 latest bundled and ported versions of mandoc for various operating
  30 systems is maintained at <http://mandoc.bsd.lv/ports.html>.
  31
  32 Regarding how packages and ports are maintained for your operating
  33 system, please consult your operating system documentation.
  34 To install mandoc manually, the following steps are needed:
  35
  36 1. If you want to build the CGI program, man.cgi(8), too,
  37 run the command "echo BUILD_CGI=1 >> configure.local".
  38 Then run "cp cgi.h.example cgi.h" and edit cgi.h as desired.
  39
  40 2. If you also want to build the catman(8) utility, run the
  41 command "echo BUILD_CATMAN=1 >> configure.local".  Note that it
  42 is unlikely to be a drop-in replacement providing the same
  43 functionality as your system's "catman", if your operating
  44 system contains one.
  45
  46 3. Define MANPATH_DEFAULT in configure.local
  47 if /usr/share/man:/usr/X11R6/man:/usr/local/man is not appropriate
  48 for your operating system.
  49
  50 4. Run "./configure".
  51 This script attempts autoconfiguration of mandoc for your system.
  52 Read both its standard output and the file "Makefile.local" it
  53 generates.  If anything looks wrong or different from what you
  54 wish, read the file "configure.local.example", create and edit
  55 a file "configure.local", and re-run "./configure" until the
  56 result seems right to you.
  57 On Solaris 10 and earlier, you may have to run "ksh ./configure"
  58 because the native /bin/sh lacks some POSIX features.
  59
  60 5. Run "make".
  61 Any POSIX-compatible make, in particular both BSD make and GNU make,
  62 should work.  If the build fails, look at "configure.local.example"
  63 and go back to step 2.
  64
  65 6. Run "make -n install" and check whether everything will be
  66 installed to the intended places.  Otherwise, put some *DIR or *NM*
  67 variables into "configure.local" and go back to step 4.
  68
  69 7. Optionally run the regression suite.
  70 Basically, that amounts to "cd regress && ./regress.pl".
  71 But you should probably look at "./mandoc -l regress/regress.pl.1"
  72 first.
  73
  74 8. Run "sudo make install".  If you intend to build a binary
  75 package using some kind of fake root mechanism, you may need a
  76 command like "make DESTDIR=... install".  Read the *-install targets
  77 in the "Makefile" to understand how DESTDIR is used.
  78
  79 9. Run the command "sudo makewhatis" to build mandoc.db(5) databases
  80 in all the directory trees configured in step 3.  Whenever installing
  81 new manual pages, re-run makewhatis(8) to update the databases, or
  82 apropos(1) will not find the new pages.
  83
  84 10. To set up a man.cgi(8) server, read its manual page.
  85
  86 Note that a very small number of man(7) pages contain low-level
  87 roff(7) markup that mandoc does not yet understand.  On some BSD
  88 systems using mandoc, third-party software is vetted on whether it
  89 may be formatted with mandoc.  If not, groff(1) is pulled in as a
  90 dependency and used to install pre-formatted "catpages" instead of
  91 manual page sources.  This mechanism is used much less frequently
  92 than in the past.  On OpenBSD, only 25 out of about 10000 ports
  93 still require formatting with groff(1).
  94
  95
  96 Understanding mandoc dependencies
  97 ---------------------------------
  98 The following libraries are required:
  99
 100 1. zlib for decompressing gzipped manual pages.
 101
 102 2. The fts(3) directory traversion functions.
 103 If your system does not have them, the bundled compatibility version
 104 will be used, so you need not worry in that case.  But be careful: old
 105 glibc versions of fts(3) were known to be broken on 32bit platforms,
 106 see <https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=11460>.
 107 That was presumably fixed in glibc-2.23.
 108 If you run into that problem, set "HAVE_FTS=0" in configure.local.
 109
 110 3. Marc Espie's ohash(3) library.
 111 If your system does not have it, the bundled compatibility version
 112 will be used, so you probably need not worry about it.
 113
 114 One of the chief design goals of the mandoc toolbox is to make
 115 sure that nothing related to documentation requires C++.
 116 Consequently, linking mandoc against any kind of C++ program
 117 would defeat the purpose and is not supported.
 118
 119
 120 Checking autoconfiguration quality
 121 ----------------------------------
 122 If you want to check whether automatic configuration works well
 123 on your platform, consider the following:
 124
 125 The mandoc package intentionally does not use GNU autoconf because
 126 we consider that toolset a blatant example of overengineering that
 127 is obsolete nowadays, since all modern operating systems are now
 128 reasonably close to POSIX and do not need arcane shell magic any
 129 longer.  If your system does need such magic, consider upgrading
 130 to reasonably modern POSIX-compliant tools rather than asking for
 131 autoconf-style workarounds.
 132
 133 As far as mandoc is using any features not mandated by ANSI X3.159-1989
 134 ("ANSI C") or IEEE Std 1003.1-2008 ("POSIX") that some modern systems
 135 do not have, we intend to provide autoconfiguration tests and
 136 compat_*.c implementations.  Please report any that turn out to be
 137 missing.  Note that while we do strive to produce portable code,
 138 we do not slavishly restrict ourselves to POSIX-only interfaces.
 139 For improved security and readability, we do use well-designed,
 140 modern interfaces like reallocarray(3) even if they are still rather
 141 uncommon, of course bundling compat_*.c implementations as needed.
 142
 143 Where mandoc is using ANSI C or POSIX features that some systems
 144 still lack and that compat_*.c implementations can be provided for
 145 without too much hassle, we will consider adding them, too, so
 146 please report whatever is missing on your platform.
 147
 148 The following steps can be used to manually check the automatic
 149 configuration on your platform:
 150
 151 1. Run "make distclean".
 152
 153 2. Run "./configure"
 154
 155 3. Read the file "config.log".  It shows the compiler commands used
 156 to test the libraries installed on your system and the standard
 157 output and standard error output these commands produce.  Watch out
 158 for unexpected failures.  Those are most likely to happen if headers
 159 or libraries are installed in unusual places or interfaces defined
 160 in unusual headers.  You can also look at the file "config.h" and
 161 check that no "#define HAVE_*" differ from your expectations.