makewhatis(1) [freebsd man page]
MAKEWHATIS(1) BSD General Commands Manual MAKEWHATIS(1) NAME
makewhatis -- create whatis database SYNOPSIS
makewhatis [-a] [-i column] [-n name] [-o file] [-v] [-L] [directories ...] DESCRIPTION
The makewhatis utility collects the names and short descriptions from all the unformatted man pages in the directories and puts them into a file used by the whatis(1) and apropos(1) commands. Directories may be separated by colons instead of spaces. If no directories are speci- fied, the contents of the MANPATH environment variable will be used, or if that is not set, the default directory /usr/share/man will be pro- cessed. The options are as follows: -a Appends to the output file(s) instead of replacing them. The output will be sorted with duplicate lines removed, but may have obsolete entries. -i column Indents the description by column characters. The default value is 24. -n name Uses name instead of whatis. -o file Outputs all lines to the file instead of */man/whatis. -v Makes makewhatis more verbose about what it is doing. -L Process only localized subdirectories corresponding to the locale specified in the standard environment variables. ENVIRONMENT
LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, LANG These variables control what subdirectories will be processed if the -L option is used. MACHINE If set, its value is used to override the current machine type when searching machine specific subdirectories. MACHINE_ARCH If set, its value is used to override the current architecture when searching architecture specific subdirectories. MANPATH Determines the set of directories to be processed if none are given on the command line. FILES
/usr/share/man Default directory to process if the MANPATH environment variable is not set. */man/whatis The default output file. EXIT STATUS
The makewhatis utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs. SEE ALSO
apropos(1), whatis(1) HISTORY
The makewhatis command appeared in FreeBSD 2.1. AUTHORS
The makewhatis program was originally written in Perl and was contributed by Wolfram Schneider. The current version of makewhatis was rewritten in C by John Rochester. BSD
December 3, 2005 BSD
Check Out this Related Man Page
MAKEWHATIS(8) System Manager's Manual MAKEWHATIS(8) NAME
makewhatis - index UNIX manuals SYNOPSIS
makewhatis [-aDnpQ] [-T utf8] [-C file] makewhatis [-aDnpQ] [-T utf8] dir ... makewhatis [-DnpQ] [-T utf8] -d dir [file ...] makewhatis [-Dnp] [-T utf8] -u dir [file ...] makewhatis [-DQ] -t file ... DESCRIPTION
The makewhatis utility extracts keywords from UNIX manuals and indexes them in a database for fast retrieval by apropos(1), whatis(1), and man(1)'s -k option. By default, makewhatis creates a database in each dir using the files mansection/[arch/]title.section and catsection/[arch/]title.0 in that directory. Existing databases are replaced. If a directory contains no manual pages, no database is created in that directory. If dir is not provided, makewhatis uses the default paths stipulated by man.conf(5). The arguments are as follows: -a Use all directories and files found below dir .... -C file Specify an alternative configuration file in man.conf(5) format. -D Display all files added or removed to the index. With a second -D, also show all keywords added for each file. -d dir Merge (remove and re-add) file ... to the database in dir. -n Do not create or modify any database; scan and parse only, and print manual page names and descriptions to standard output. -p Print warnings about potential problems with manual pages to the standard error output. -Q Quickly build reduced-size databases by reading only the NAME sections of manuals. The resulting databases will usually contain names and descriptions only. -T utf8 Use UTF-8 encoding instead of ASCII for strings stored in the databases. -t file ... Check the given files for potential problems. Implies -a, -n, and -p. All diagnostic messages are printed to the standard output; the standard error output is not used. -u dir Remove file ... from the database in dir. If that causes the database to become empty, also delete the database file. If fatal parse errors are encountered while parsing, the offending file is printed to stderr, omitted from the index, and the parse continues with the next input file. ENVIRONMENT
MANPATH A colon-separated list of directories to create databases in. Ignored if a dir argument or the -t option is specified. FILES
mandoc.db A database of manpages relative to the directory of the file. This file is portable across architectures and systems, so long as the manpage hierarchy it indexes does not change. /etc/man.conf The default man(1) configuration file. EXIT STATUS
The makewhatis utility exits with one of the following values: 0 No errors occurred. 5 Invalid command line arguments were specified. No input files have been read. 6 An operating system error occurred, for example memory exhaustion or an error accessing input files. Such errors cause makewhatis to exit at once, possibly in the middle of parsing or formatting a file. The output databases are corrupt and should be removed. SEE ALSO
apropos(1), man(1), whatis(1), man.conf(5) HISTORY
A makewhatis utility first appeared in 2BSD. It was rewritten in perl(1) for OpenBSD 2.7 and in C for OpenBSD 5.6. The dir argument first appeared in NetBSD 1.0; the options -dpt in OpenBSD 2.7; the option -u in OpenBSD 3.4; and the options -aCDnQT in OpenBSD 5.6. AUTHORS
Bill Joy wrote the original BSD makewhatis in February 1979, Marc Espie started the Perl version in 2000, and the current version of makewhatis was written by Kristaps Dzonsons <kristaps@bsd.lv> and Ingo Schwarze <schwarze@openbsd.org>. Debian May 17, 2017 MAKEWHATIS(8)