Linux From Scratch: Version 5.0-pre2
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# Installing Man-1.5m2

    Estimated build time:           0.1 SBU
    Estimated required disk space:  2 MB

## Contents of Man

(Last checked against version 1.5k.)

Man is a man pager.

Man installs the following:

### Program Files

apropos, makewhatis, man, man2dvi, man2html and whatis

##

## Man Installation Dependencies

(Last checked against version 1.5i.)

Bash: sh
Binutils: as, ld
Coreutils: cat, chmod, cp, echo, install, mkdir, rm
Gawk: awk
GCC: c11, collect2, cpp0, gcc
Grep: grep
Make: make
Sed: sed

##

## Installation of Man

We'll make three adjustments to the sources of Man.

The first patch comments out the "MANPATH /usr/man" line in the `man.conf` file to prevent redundant results when using programs such as `whatis`:

    patch -Np1 -i ../man-1.5m2-manpath.patch

The second patch adds the -R option to the PAGER variable so that escape sequences are handled properly:

    patch -Np1 -i ../man-1.5m2-pager.patch

The third and last patch prevents a problem when man pages not formatted with more than 80 columns are used in conjunction with recent releases of `groff`:

    patch -Np1 -i ../man-1.5m2-80cols.patch

Now prepare Man for compilation:

    ./configure -default -confdir=/etc

The meaning of the configure options:

- `-default`: This tells the configure script to select a sensible set of default options. For example: only English man pages, no message catalogs, man not suid, handle compressed man pages, compress cat pages, create cat pages whenever the appropriate directory exists, follow FHS by putting cat pages under /var/cache/man provided that that directory exists.

- `-confdir=/etc`: This tells the `man` program to look for the `man.conf` configuration file in the `/etc` directory.

Compile the package:

    make

And install it:

    make install

> Note: If you wish to disable SGR escape sequences, you should edit the man.conf file and add the `-c` argument to nroff.

You may want to also take a look at the BLFS book which deals with formatting and compression issues for man pages.

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