NAME
man.conf —
man(1) and
manpath(1) configuration files
DESCRIPTION
The man.conf file is used to configure the
manual search path, locales, and utility set for
man(1) and its
related utilities. During initialization,
man(1) reads the
configuration files located at
/usr/local/etc/man.d/*.conf and
/etc/man.conf.
The files contained in /usr/local/etc/man.d/*.conf are intended to be used by the ports(7) system for extending the manual set to support additional paths and locales. /etc/man.conf is intended to be used by the local administrator to set additional policy.
Currently supported configuration variables include:
- MANCONFIG
- Overrides the default location to import additional manual configuration files. Defaults to /usr/local/etc/man.d/*.conf.
- MANPATH
- Adds the specified directory to the manual search path.
- MANLOCALE
- Indicates support is available for the given locale.
For pages in a given language, overriding the default toolset for display is supported via the following definitions:
- EQN_LANG
- NROFF_LANG
- PIC_LANG
- TBL_LANG
- TROFF_LANG
- REFER_LANG
- VGRIND_LANG
See the EXAMPLES section for how to use these variables.
IMPLEMENTATION NOTES
The parser used for this utility is very basic and only supports comment characters (#) at the beginning of a line.
FILES
- /etc/man.conf
- System configuration file.
- /usr/local/etc/man.d/*.conf
- Local configuration files.
EXAMPLES
A perl port that needs to install additional manual pages outside of the default location could install a file in /usr/local/etc/man.d/perl.conf with the following contents:
# Add perl man pages to search path MANPATH /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.9/man MANPATH /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.9/perl/man
A Japanese localization port could install a custom toolset and include a file in /usr/local/etc/man.d/ja-man-doc.conf with the following contents:
# Setup Japanese toolset MANLOCALE ja_JP.eucJP EQN_JA /usr/local/bin/geqn PIC_JA /usr/local/bin/gpic TBL_JA /usr/local/bin/gtbl NROFF_JA /usr/local/bin/groff -man -dlang=ja_JP.eucJP TROFF_JA /usr/local/bin/groff -man -dlang=ja_JP.euc.jp
If the system administrator decides to override the LOCALBASE make(1) variable causing all ports(7) to be installed into /opt instead of /usr/local, specifying the following in /etc/man.conf will accommodate this change:
# Look for additional configuration files MANCONFIG /opt/etc/man.d/*.conf