INSTALL

   1 $Id: INSTALL,v 1.11 2015/03/19 14:57:29 schwarze Exp $
   2
   3 About mdocml, the portable mandoc distribution
   4 ----------------------------------------------
   5 The mandoc manpage compiler toolset is a suite of tools compiling
   6 mdoc(7), the roff(7) macro language of choice for BSD manual pages,
   7 and man(7), the predominant historical language for UNIX manuals.
   8 It includes a man(1) manual viewer and additional tools.
   9 For general information, see <http://mdocml.bsd.lv/>.
  10
  11 In case you have questions or want to provide feedback, read
  12 <http://mdocml.bsd.lv/contact.html>.  Consider subscribing to the
  13 discuss@ mailing list mentioned on that page.  If you intend to
  14 help with the development of mandoc, consider subscribing to the
  15 tech@ mailing list, too.
  16
  17 Enjoy using the mandoc toolset!
  18
  19 Ingo Schwarze, Karlsruhe, March 2015
  20
  21
  22 Installation
  23 ------------
  24 Before manually installing mandoc on your system, please check
  25 whether the newest version of mandoc is already installed by default
  26 or available via a binary package or a ports system.  A list of the
  27 latest bundled and ported versions of mandoc for various operating
  28 systems is maintained at <http://mdocml.bsd.lv/ports.html>.
  29
  30 Regarding how packages and ports are maintained for your operating
  31 system, please consult your operating system documentation.
  32 To install mandoc manually, the following steps are needed:
  33
  34 1. If you want to build the CGI program, man.cgi(8), too, run the
  35 command "echo BUILD_CGI=1 > configure.local".  Then run "cp
  36 cgi.h.examples cgi.h" and edit cgi.h as desired.
  37
  38 2. Run "./configure".
  39 This script attempts autoconfiguration of mandoc for your system.
  40 Read both its standard output and the file "Makefile.local" it
  41 generates.  If anything looks wrong or different from what you
  42 wish, read the file "configure.local.example", create and edit
  43 a file "configure.local", and re-run "./configure" until the
  44 result seems right to you.
  45 On Solaris 10 and earlier, you may have to run "ksh ./configure"
  46 because the native /bin/sh lacks some POSIX features.
  47
  48 3. Run "make".
  49 Any POSIX-compatible make, in particular both BSD make and GNU make,
  50 should work.  If the build fails, look at "configure.local.example"
  51 and go back to step 2.
  52
  53 4. Run "make -n install" and check whether everything will be
  54 installed to the intended places.  Otherwise, put some *DIR or *NM*
  55 variables into "configure.local" and go back to step 2.
  56
  57 5. Run "sudo make install".  If you intend to build a binary
  58 package using some kind of fake root mechanism, you may need a
  59 command like "make DESTDIR=... install".  Read the *-install targets
  60 in the "Makefile" to understand how DESTDIR is used.
  61
  62 6. If you want to use the integrated man(1) and your system uses
  63 manpath(1), make sure it is configured correctly, in particular,
  64 it returns all directory trees where manual pages are installed.
  65 Otherwise, if your system uses man.conf(5), make sure it contains
  66 a "_whatdb" line for each directory tree, and the order of these
  67 lines meets your wishes.
  68
  69 7. If you compiled with database support, run the command "sudo
  70 makewhatis" to build mandoc.db(5) databases in all the directory
  71 trees configured in step 6.  Whenever installing new manual pages,
  72 re-run makewhatis(8) to update the databases, or apropos(1) will
  73 not find the new pages.
  74
  75 8. To set up a man.cgi(8) server, read its manual page.
  76
  77 Note that some man(7) pages may contain low-level roff(7) markup
  78 that mandoc does not yet understand.  On some BSD systems using
  79 mandoc, third-party software is vetted on whether it may be formatted
  80 with mandoc.  If not, groff(1) is pulled in as a dependency and
  81 used to install a pre-formatted "catpage" instead of directly as
  82 manual page source.
  83
  84
  85 Understanding mandoc dependencies
  86 ---------------------------------
  87 The mandoc(1), man(1), and demandoc(1) utilities have no external
  88 dependencies, but makewhatis(8) and apropos(1) depend on the
  89 following software:
  90
  91 1. The SQLite database system, see <http://sqlite.org/>.
  92 The recommended version of SQLite is 3.8.4.3 or newer.  The mandoc
  93 toolset is known to work with version 3.7.5 or newer.  Versions
  94 older than 3.8.3 may not achieve full performance due to the
  95 missing SQLITE_DETERMINISTIC optimization flag.  Versions older
  96 than 3.8.0 may not show full error information if opening a database
  97 fails due to the missing sqlite3_errstr() API.  Both are very minor
  98 problems, apropos(1) is fully usable with SQLite 3.7.5.  Versions
  99 older than 3.7.5 may or may not work, they have not been tested.
 100
 101 2. The fts(3) directory traversion functions.
 102 If your system does not have them, the bundled compatibility version
 103 will be used, so you need not worry in that case.  But be careful: the
 104 glibc version of fts(3) is known to be broken on 32bit platforms,
 105 see <https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=15838>.
 106 If you run into that problem, set "HAVE_FTS=0" in configure.local.
 107
 108 3. Marc Espie's ohash(3) library.
 109 If your system does not have it, the bundled compatibility version
 110 will be used, so you probably need not worry about it.
 111
 112
 113 Checking autoconfiguration quality
 114 ----------------------------------
 115 If you want to check whether automatic configuration works well
 116 on your platform, consider the following:
 117
 118 The mandoc package intentionally does not use GNU autoconf because
 119 we consider that toolset a blatant example of overengineering that
 120 is obsolete nowadays, since all modern operating systems are now
 121 reasonably close to POSIX and do not need arcane shell magic any
 122 longer.  If your system does need such magic, consider upgrading
 123 to reasonably modern POSIX-compliant tools rather than asking for
 124 autoconf-style workarounds.
 125
 126 As far as mandoc is using any features not mandated by ANSI X3.159-1989
 127 ("ANSI C") or IEEE Std 1003.1-2008 ("POSIX") that some modern systems
 128 do not have, we intend to provide autoconfiguration tests and
 129 compat_*.c implementations.  Please report any that turn out to be
 130 missing.  Note that while we do strive to produce portable code,
 131 we do not slavishly restrict ourselves to POSIX-only interfaces.
 132 For improved security and readability, we do use well-designed,
 133 modern interfaces like reallocarray(3) even if they are still rather
 134 uncommon, of course bundling compat_*.c implementations as needed.
 135
 136 Where mandoc is using ANSI C or POSIX features that some systems
 137 still lack and that compat_*.c implementations can be provided for
 138 without too much hassle, we will consider adding them, too, so
 139 please report whatever is missing on your platform.
 140
 141 The following steps can be used to manually check the automatic
 142 configuration on your platform:
 143
 144 1. Run "make distclean".
 145
 146 2. Run "./configure"
 147
 148 3. Read the file "config.log".  It shows the compiler commands used
 149 to test the libraries installed on your system and the standard
 150 output and standard error output these commands produce.  Watch out
 151 for unexpected failures.  Those are most likely to happen if headers
 152 or libraries are installed in unusual places or interfaces defined
 153 in unusual headers.  You can also look at the file "config.h" and
 154 check that no "#define HAVE_*" differ from your expectations.