INSTALL

   1 $Id: INSTALL,v 1.3 2014/08/11 01:39:00 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 The toolset does not yet implement man(1); that is only scheduled
   9 for the next release, 1.13.2.  It can, however, already serve to
  10 translate source manpages to the output displayed by man(1).
  11 For general information, see <http://mdocml.bsd.lv/>.
  12
  13 In this document, we describe the installation and deployment of
  14 mandoc(1), first as a simple, standalone formatter, and then as part of
  15 the man(1) system.
  16
  17 In case you have questions or want to provide feedback, read
  18 <http://mdocml.bsd.lv/contact.html>.  Consider subscribing to the
  19 discuss@ mailing list mentioned on that page.  If you intend to
  20 help with the development of mandoc, consider subscribing to the
  21 tech@ mailing list, too.
  22
  23 Enjoy using the mandoc toolset!
  24
  25 Ingo Schwarze, Karlsruhe, August 2014
  26
  27
  28 Installation
  29 ------------
  30 Before manually installing mandoc on your system, please check
  31 whether the newest version of mandoc is already installed by default
  32 or available via a binary package or a ports system.  A list of the
  33 latest bundled and ported versions of mandoc for various operating
  34 systems is maintained at <http://mdocml.bsd.lv/ports.html>.
  35
  36 If mandoc is installed, you can check the version by running "mandoc -V".
  37 The version contained in this distribution tarball is listed near
  38 the beginning of the file "Makefile".
  39
  40 Regarding how packages and ports are maintained for your operating
  41 system, please consult your operating system documentation.
  42 To install mandoc manually, the following steps are needed:
  43
  44 1. Decide whether you want to build the base tools mandoc(1),
  45 preconv(1) and demandoc(1) only or whether you also want to build the
  46 database tools apropos(1) and makewhatis(8).  For the latter,
  47 the following dependencies are required:
  48
  49 1.1. The SQLite database system, see <http://sqlite.org/>.
  50 The recommended version of SQLite is 3.8.4.3 or newer.  The mandoc
  51 toolset is known to work with version 3.7.5 or newer.  Versions
  52 older than 3.8.3 may not achieve full performance due to the
  53 missing SQLITE_DETERMINISTIC optimization flag.  Versions older
  54 than 3.8.0 may not show full error information if opening a database
  55 fails due to the missing sqlite3_errstr() API.  Both are very minor
  56 problems, apropos(1) is fully usable with SQLite 3.7.5.  Versions
  57 older than 3.7.5 may or may not work, they have not been tested.
  58
  59 1.2. The fts(3) directory traversion functions.
  60 If your system does not have them, the bundled compatibility version
  61 will be used, so you need not worry in that case.  But be careful: the
  62 glibc version of fts(3) is known to be broken on 32bit platforms,
  63 see <https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=15838>.
  64
  65 1.3. Marc Espie's ohash(3) library.
  66 If your system does not have it, the bundled compatibility version
  67 will be used, so you probably need not worry about it.
  68
  69 2. If you choose to build the database tools, too, decide whether
  70 you also want to build the CGI program, man.cgi(8).
  71
  72 3. Read the beginning of the file "Makefile" from "USER SETTINGS"
  73 to "END OF USER SETTINGS" and edit it as required.  In particular,
  74 disable "BUILD_TARGETS += db-build" if you do not want database
  75 support or enable "BUILD_TARGETS += cgi-build" if you do want
  76 the CGI program.
  77
  78 4. Run "make".  No separate "./configure" or "make depend" steps
  79 are needed.  The former is run automatically by "make".  The latter
  80 is a maintainer target.  If you merely want to build the released
  81 version as opposed to doing active development, there is no need
  82 to regenerate the dependency specifications.  Any POSIX-compatible
  83 make, in particular both BSD make and GNU make, should work.
  84
  85 5. Run "make -n install" and check whether everything will be
  86 installed to the intended places.  Otherwise, edit the *DIR variables
  87 in the Makefile until it is.
  88
  89 6. Run "sudo make install".  If you intend to build a binary
  90 package using some kind of fake root mechanism, you may need a
  91 command like "make DESTDIR=... install".  Read the *-install targets
  92 in the "Makefile" to understand how DESTDIR is used.
  93
  94 7. To set up a man.cgi(8) server, read its manual page.
  95
  96 8. To use mandoc(1) as your man(1) formatter, read the "Deployment"
  97 section below.
  98
  99
 100 Checking autoconfiguration quality
 101 ----------------------------------
 102 If you want to check whether automatic configuration works well
 103 on your platform, consider the following:
 104
 105 The mandoc package intentionally does not use GNU autoconf because
 106 we consider that toolset a blatant example of overengineering that
 107 is obsolete nowadays, since all modern operating systems are now
 108 reasonably close to POSIX and do not need arcane shell magic any
 109 longer.  If your system does need such magic, consider upgrading
 110 to reasonably modern POSIX-compliant tools rather than asking for
 111 autoconf-style workarounds.
 112
 113 As far as mandoc is using any features not mandated by ANSI X3.159-1989
 114 ("ANSI C") or IEEE Std 1003.1-2008 ("POSIX") that some modern systems
 115 do not have, we intend to provide autoconfiguration tests and
 116 compat_*.c implementations.  Please report any that turn out to be
 117 missing.  Note that while we do strive to produce portable code,
 118 we do not slavishly restrict ourselves to POSIX-only interfaces.
 119 For improved security and readability, we do use well-designed,
 120 modern interfaces like reallocarray(3) even if they are still rather
 121 uncommon, of course bundling compat_*.c implementations as needed.
 122
 123 Where mandoc is using ANSI C or POSIX features that some systems
 124 still lack and that compat_*.c implementations can be provided for
 125 without too much hassle, we will consider adding them, too, so
 126 please report whatever is missing on your platform.
 127
 128 The following steps can be used to manually check the automatic
 129 configuration on your platform:
 130
 131 1. Run "make clean".
 132
 133 2. Run "make config.h"
 134
 135 3. Read the file "config.log".  It shows the compiler commands used
 136 to test the libraries installed on your system and the standard
 137 output and standard error output these commands produce.  Watch out
 138 for unexpected failures.  Those are most likely to happen if headers
 139 or libraries are installed in unusual places or interfaces defined
 140 in unusual headers.  You can also look at the file "config.h" and
 141 check that no expected "#define HAVE_*" lines are missing.  The
 142 list of tests run can be found in the file "configure".
 143
 144
 145 Deployment
 146 ----------
 147 If you want to integrate the mandoc(1) tools with your existing
 148 man(1) system as a formatter, then contact us first: on systems without
 149 mandoc(1) as the default, you may have your work cut out for you!
 150 Usually, you can have your default installation and mandoc(1) work right
 151 alongside each other by using user-specific versions of the files
 152 mentioned below.
 153
 154 0. Back up each file you want to change!
 155
 156 1. First see whether your system has "/etc/man.conf" or "/etc/manpath.conf"
 157 (if it has neither, but man(1) is functional, then let us know) or,
 158 if running as your own user, a per-user override file.  In either
 159 case, find where man(1) is executing nroff(1) or groff(1) to format
 160 manuals.  Replace these calls with mandoc(1).
 161
 162 2. Then make sure that man(1) isn't running preprocessors, so you may
 163 need to replace tbl(1), eqn(1), and similar references with cat(1).
 164 Some man(1) implementations, like that on Mac OSX, let you run "man -d"
 165 to see how the formatter is invoked.  Use this to test your changes.  On
 166 Mac OS X, for instance, man(1) will prepend all files with ".ll" and
 167 ".nr" to set the terminal size, so you need to pass "tail -n+2 |
 168 mandoc(1)" to disregard them.
 169
 170 3. Finally, make sure that mandoc(1) is actually being invoked instead
 171 of cached pages being pulled up.  You can usually do this by commenting
 172 out NOCACHE or similar.
 173
 174 mandoc(1) still has a long way to go in understanding non-trivial
 175 low-level roff(7) markup embedded in some man(7) pages.  On the BSD
 176 systems using mandoc(1), third-party software is generally vetted
 177 on whether it may be formatted with mandoc(1).  If not, groff(1)
 178 is pulled in as a dependency and used to install a pre-formatted
 179 "catpage" intead of directly as manual page source.
 180
 181 For more background on switching operating systems to use mandoc(1)
 182 instead of groff(1) to format manuals, see the two BSDCan presentations
 183 by Ingo Schwarze:
 184 <http://www.openbsd.org/papers/bsdcan11-mandoc-openbsd.html>
 185 <http://www.openbsd.org/papers/bsdcan14-mandoc.pdf>