INSTALL

   1 $Id: INSTALL,v 1.4 2014/08/16 19:00:01 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 You can find the version contained in this distribution tarball
  38 by running "./configure".
  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. If you want to build the CGI program, man.cgi(8), too, run the
  45 command "echo BUILD_CGI=1 > configure.local".
  46
  47 2. Run "./configure".
  48 This script attempts autoconfiguration of mandoc for your system.
  49 Read both its standard output and the file "Makefile.local" it
  50 generates.  If anything looks wrong or different from what you
  51 wish, read the file "configure.local.example", create and edit
  52 a file "configure.local", and re-run "./configure" until the
  53 result seems right to you.
  54
  55 3. Run "make".
  56 Any POSIX-compatible make, in particular both BSD make and GNU make,
  57 should work.  If the build fails, look at "configure.local.example"
  58 and go back to step 2.
  59
  60 4. Run "make -n install" and check whether everything will be
  61 installed to the intended places.  Otherwise, put some *DIR variables
  62 into "configure.local" and go back to step 2.
  63
  64 5. Run "sudo make install".  If you intend to build a binary
  65 package using some kind of fake root mechanism, you may need a
  66 command like "make DESTDIR=... install".  Read the *-install targets
  67 in the "Makefile" to understand how DESTDIR is used.
  68
  69 6. To set up a man.cgi(8) server, read its manual page.
  70
  71 7. To use mandoc(1) as your man(1) formatter, read the "Deployment"
  72 section below.
  73
  74
  75 Understanding mandoc dependencies
  76 ---------------------------------
  77 The mandoc(1), preconv(1), and demandoc(1) utilities have no external
  78 dependencies.  However, makewhatis(8) and apropos(1) depend on the
  79 following software:
  80
  81 1. The SQLite database system, see <http://sqlite.org/>.
  82 The recommended version of SQLite is 3.8.4.3 or newer.  The mandoc
  83 toolset is known to work with version 3.7.5 or newer.  Versions
  84 older than 3.8.3 may not achieve full performance due to the
  85 missing SQLITE_DETERMINISTIC optimization flag.  Versions older
  86 than 3.8.0 may not show full error information if opening a database
  87 fails due to the missing sqlite3_errstr() API.  Both are very minor
  88 problems, apropos(1) is fully usable with SQLite 3.7.5.  Versions
  89 older than 3.7.5 may or may not work, they have not been tested.
  90
  91 1.2. The fts(3) directory traversion functions.
  92 If your system does not have them, the bundled compatibility version
  93 will be used, so you need not worry in that case.  But be careful: the
  94 glibc version of fts(3) is known to be broken on 32bit platforms,
  95 see <https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=15838>.
  96 If you run into that problem, set "HAVE_FTS=0" in configure.local.
  97
  98 1.3. Marc Espie's ohash(3) library.
  99 If your system does not have it, the bundled compatibility version
 100 will be used, so you probably need not worry about it.
 101
 102
 103 Checking autoconfiguration quality
 104 ----------------------------------
 105 If you want to check whether automatic configuration works well
 106 on your platform, consider the following:
 107
 108 The mandoc package intentionally does not use GNU autoconf because
 109 we consider that toolset a blatant example of overengineering that
 110 is obsolete nowadays, since all modern operating systems are now
 111 reasonably close to POSIX and do not need arcane shell magic any
 112 longer.  If your system does need such magic, consider upgrading
 113 to reasonably modern POSIX-compliant tools rather than asking for
 114 autoconf-style workarounds.
 115
 116 As far as mandoc is using any features not mandated by ANSI X3.159-1989
 117 ("ANSI C") or IEEE Std 1003.1-2008 ("POSIX") that some modern systems
 118 do not have, we intend to provide autoconfiguration tests and
 119 compat_*.c implementations.  Please report any that turn out to be
 120 missing.  Note that while we do strive to produce portable code,
 121 we do not slavishly restrict ourselves to POSIX-only interfaces.
 122 For improved security and readability, we do use well-designed,
 123 modern interfaces like reallocarray(3) even if they are still rather
 124 uncommon, of course bundling compat_*.c implementations as needed.
 125
 126 Where mandoc is using ANSI C or POSIX features that some systems
 127 still lack and that compat_*.c implementations can be provided for
 128 without too much hassle, we will consider adding them, too, so
 129 please report whatever is missing on your platform.
 130
 131 The following steps can be used to manually check the automatic
 132 configuration on your platform:
 133
 134 1. Run "make distclean".
 135
 136 2. Run "./configure"
 137
 138 3. Read the file "config.log".  It shows the compiler commands used
 139 to test the libraries installed on your system and the standard
 140 output and standard error output these commands produce.  Watch out
 141 for unexpected failures.  Those are most likely to happen if headers
 142 or libraries are installed in unusual places or interfaces defined
 143 in unusual headers.  You can also look at the file "config.h" and
 144 check that no "#define HAVE_*" differ from your expectations.
 145
 146
 147 Deployment
 148 ----------
 149 If you want to integrate the mandoc(1) tools with your existing
 150 man(1) system as a formatter, then contact us first: on systems without
 151 mandoc(1) as the default, you may have your work cut out for you!
 152 Usually, you can have your default installation and mandoc(1) work right
 153 alongside each other by using user-specific versions of the files
 154 mentioned below.
 155
 156 0. Back up each file you want to change!
 157
 158 1. First see whether your system has "/etc/man.conf" or "/etc/manpath.conf"
 159 (if it has neither, but man(1) is functional, then let us know) or,
 160 if running as your own user, a per-user override file.  In either
 161 case, find where man(1) is executing nroff(1) or groff(1) to format
 162 manuals.  Replace these calls with mandoc(1).
 163
 164 2. Then make sure that man(1) isn't running preprocessors, so you may
 165 need to replace tbl(1), eqn(1), and similar references with cat(1).
 166 Some man(1) implementations, like that on Mac OSX, let you run "man -d"
 167 to see how the formatter is invoked.  Use this to test your changes.  On
 168 Mac OS X, for instance, man(1) will prepend all files with ".ll" and
 169 ".nr" to set the terminal size, so you need to pass "tail -n+2 |
 170 mandoc(1)" to disregard them.
 171
 172 3. Finally, make sure that mandoc(1) is actually being invoked instead
 173 of cached pages being pulled up.  You can usually do this by commenting
 174 out NOCACHE or similar.
 175
 176 mandoc(1) still has a long way to go in understanding non-trivial
 177 low-level roff(7) markup embedded in some man(7) pages.  On the BSD
 178 systems using mandoc(1), third-party software is generally vetted
 179 on whether it may be formatted with mandoc(1).  If not, groff(1)
 180 is pulled in as a dependency and used to install a pre-formatted
 181 "catpage" intead of directly as manual page source.
 182
 183 For more background on switching operating systems to use mandoc(1)
 184 instead of groff(1) to format manuals, see the two BSDCan presentations
 185 by Ingo Schwarze:
 186 <http://www.openbsd.org/papers/bsdcan11-mandoc-openbsd.html>
 187 <http://www.openbsd.org/papers/bsdcan14-mandoc.pdf>