Git's configure script --mandir doesn't work

Git's configure script --mandir doesn't work

[Stephen Fisher]

I'm installing Git 2.2.0 from source distribution on NetBSD 6.1.5 
(amd64) and when I specify --mandir=/usr/local/man, it still installs 
man pages in the default /usr/local/share/man directory.  Is there a fix 
available for this?

Re: Git's configure script --mandir doesn't work

[Jeff King]

On Thu, Dec 04, 2014 at 04:25:32PM -0700, Stephen Fisher wrote:

> I'm installing Git 2.2.0 from source distribution on NetBSD 6.1.5 
> (amd64) and when I specify --mandir=/usr/local/man, it still installs 
> man pages in the default /usr/local/share/man directory.  Is there a fix 
> available for this?

It works fine for me here (Debian):

  tar xzf git-2.2.0.tar.gz
  cd git-2.2.0
  ./configure --prefix=/tmp/foo --mandir=/tmp/bar
  make install-man

puts the manpages into /tmp/bar.

Can you elaborate on the commands you're running? After running the
configure script, can you confirm that "mandir" is set appropriately in
config.mak.autogen?

-Peff

Re: Git's configure script --mandir doesn't work

[Stephen Fisher]

On Fri, Dec 05, 2014 at 04:36:20AM -0500, Jeff King wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 04, 2014 at 04:25:32PM -0700, Stephen Fisher wrote:
> 
> > I'm installing Git 2.2.0 from source distribution on NetBSD 6.1.5 
> > (amd64) and when I specify --mandir=/usr/local/man, it still 
> > installs man pages in the default /usr/local/share/man directory.  
> > Is there a fix available for this?
> 
> It works fine for me here (Debian):

> Can you elaborate on the commands you're running? After running the 
> configure script, can you confirm that "mandir" is set appropriately 
> in config.mak.autogen?

Thanks for your reply and sorry for my delay in responding.

I'm executing ./configure --mandir=/usr/local/man --disable-pthreads 
then gmake and gmake install.  I'm using gmake (GNU make) because I get 
Makefile errors with the regular BSD make, but that's another issue.  
I'm disabling pthreads because there is a linking error for undefined 
references to a few functions (I probably need to pass -lpthread in 
LDFLAGS, but haven't tried that yet).

mandir is properly set in config.mak.autogen.

When I set prefix to /tmp/foo and mandir to /tmp/bar like your example, 
it installs things into /tmp/foo, but /tmp/bar isn't even created.

I noticed text files in Documentation/ that look like the content of man 
pages, and when I run gmake in that directory, I get an error about 
asciidoc missing to make an HTML file.  Is asciidoc required for the man 
pages as well?  I don't see any files that appear to be man page format 
other than in perl/blib/man3 and those are installed (but not under the 
mandir prefix, rather the default /usr/local/share/man prefix).

Re: Git's configure script --mandir doesn't work

[Jeff King]

On Wed, Dec 10, 2014 at 12:41:50PM -0700, Stephen Fisher wrote:

> I'm executing ./configure --mandir=/usr/local/man --disable-pthreads 
> then gmake and gmake install.  I'm using gmake (GNU make) because I get 
> Makefile errors with the regular BSD make, but that's another issue.

You have to build git with GNU make; there are several GNU-isms in the
Makefile.

> I'm disabling pthreads because there is a linking error for undefined 
> references to a few functions (I probably need to pass -lpthread in 
> LDFLAGS, but haven't tried that yet).

We should link against -lpthread automatically unless pthreads are
disabled. So that may be an issue worth investigating.

> I noticed text files in Documentation/ that look like the content of man 
> pages, and when I run gmake in that directory, I get an error about 
> asciidoc missing to make an HTML file.  Is asciidoc required for the man 
> pages as well?

Yes, you need asciidoc to build the manpages. However, there is a "make
quick-install-man" target which will install pre-formatted manpages.
You'll need to:

  git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/git/git-manpages.git

next to your git.git clone. If you are installing from tarballs, I think
there are manpage tarballs on kernel.org, as well.

> I don't see any files that appear to be man page format 
> other than in perl/blib/man3 and those are installed (but not under the 
> mandir prefix, rather the default /usr/local/share/man prefix).

It sounds like the manpage install bailed due to asciidoc failing. So
the remaining bug is that the perl Makefile does not respect $(mandir).
That does not surprise me too much. We use perl's MakeMaker to build that
Makefile, and it looks like we just pass in the prefix, not individual
paths.

-Peff