Re: Linux man-pages Makefile portability

Alejandro Colomar
2022-07-22T17:37:27Z

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Hi Ingo!

On 7/22/22 18:59, Ingo Schwarze wrote:
[...]
>>> I considered[6] using man3type, and used man3 in the end just because
>>> when in doubt I opted for the smallest change.  Knowing that it breaks
>>> mandoc(1), I'll definitely move to <man3type/>.
>
> I didn't mean to say man3/id_t.3type "breaks mandoc". Quite to the
> contrary, the above quotation explains that mandoc copes with it.

Yeah, I didn't mean break as in "mandoc(1) goes nuts, or crashes", but
rather as in "it doesn't do what I wanted it to do".

>
> However, when it comes to robustness with respect to *other* man(1)
> implementations apart from mandoc and man-db, i suspect the most
> portable and reliable way is using man1 - man9 only with no suffixes,
> consistent suffixes like "man3type/id_t.3type" are probably medium
> portability and medium reliability, and inconsistent suffixes
> like "man3/id_t.3type" and "man3type/id_t.3" are likely the least
> portable and the most fragile.
>
> So your change is an improvement.

:)

>
> The system making the heaviest use of section suffixes i'm aware of
> is Solaris:
>
> > uname -a
> SunOS unstable11s 5.11 11.3 sun4u sparc SUNW,SPARC-Enterprise
> > ls /usr/share/man/
> entities man3dat man3mvec man3sysevent man4b
> fr man3dax man3nsl man3tcl man5
> fr.ISO8859-1 man3devid man3nvpair man3tecla man5oldap
> fr.UTF-8 man3devinfo man3oldap man3tiff man5openssl
> it man3dlpi man3openssl man3tsol man7
> it.ISO8859-1 man3dns_sd man3p man3uuid man7d
> it.UTF-8 man3elf man3pam man3volmgt man7fs
> ja_JP.UTF-8 man3exacct man3pcap man3x man7i
> man-index man3ext man3perl man3x11 man7ipp
> man.cf man3f man3pi man3xau man7m
> man1 man3fcoe man3picl man3xaw man7openssl
> man1b man3fm man3picltree man3xcb man7p
> man1c man3fstyp man3plot man3xcomposite man8
> man1m man3gen man3pool man3xcurses man8oldap
> man1oldap man3gss man3proc man3xcursor man8s
> man1openssl man3hbaapi man3project man3xevie man9
> man1s man3head man3rad man3xext man9e
> man1t man3iscsit man3reparse man3xi man9f
> man2 man3kstat man3resolv man3xinerama man9p
> man3 man3kvm man3rpc man3xmu man9s
> man3archive man3layout man3sasl man3xnet pl
> man3c man3ldap man3scf man3xrandr pl.ISO8859-2
> man3c_db man3lgrp man3sec man3xss pl.UTF-8
> man3cc4 man3lib man3sip man3xt ru.KOI8-R
> man3cfgadm man3m man3slp man3xtsol ru.UTF-8
> man3cmi man3mail man3snmp man3xtst zh_CN.UTF-8
> man3commputil man3malloc man3socket man3xv
> man3contract man3mlib man3srpt man3xxf86vm
> man3cpc man3mp man3ssh2 man3zonestat
> man3curses man3mpapi man3stmf man4

Wow!
Although it's interesting to know that this list exists:
I can check it when trying to come up with a section name.

I guess Illumos shares this subsectioning scheme.

Do you know from the top of your head if any of those is dedicated to
constants such as NULL, PATH_MAX, or BUFSIZ?

In my git clone of Illumos, I can't find anything relevant:

alx@asus5775:~/src/illumos$ find | grep -i null | grep man
./illumos-gate/usr/src/man/man9f/nulldev.9f
./illumos-gate/usr/src/man/man4d/null.4d
./illumos-gate/usr/src/man/man4d/nulldriver.4d

>
> Inside these directories, they are *mostly* using the convention
> "keep both section names consistent", so i do think that is good
> to follow. Even Solaris isn't perfect in that respect, though,
> they have, for example,
>
> /usr/share/man/man3cc4/cartpol.3
>
> but on first sight, i only found about two dozen such examples.
>
>> I fixed it:
>> <https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/docs/man-pages/man-pages.git/commit/?id=451a27a78d51973b01bfb5d3b1e0ec081d9161e1>
>
> I did not scrutinize your change in detail, but had a brief look at it
> and did not see any obvious problems.
>
>> And Debian seems to work fine with man3type/ and man2type/ out of the
>> box, so I prefer it this way. I hope that other projects follow the
>> example; and that packagers/distributions also create subsection
>> directories, and don't undo my work.
>
> On Linux, undoing it would make very little sense to me because i expect
> that all man(1) programs commonly used on Linux can cope with section
> suffixes, and in particular with consistent use of session suffixes.
> Besides, undoing it properly is hardly possibly for a packager.
> If would require changing all these:
>
> - directory names

I actually make it as easy as I can to modify directory names in the
Makefile through the standard GNU directory variables.

> - file names

I don't expect them to change filenames, even if they change dirs. It
wouldn't make sense at all.

> - .TH macros

The same as fith file names. I expect them to want the pages to be in
subsections, even if they wouldn't like the directory structure.

> - and manual page cross references

That's a more difficult one. They would need to run a sed script for
every release. A good reason to not modify it.

If they change dirs and don't change this, they'd break .so links.

>
> So for better or worse, the only sane option for a packages is to follow
> your lead.

:)

Cheers,

Alex

>
> Yours,
> Ingo

--
Alejandro Colomar
<http://www.alejandro-colomar.es/>

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