MAN.CONF(5) BSD File Formats Manual MAN.CONF(5)
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 ini-
tialization, 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
SEE ALSO
apropos(1), man(1), manpath(1), whatis(1)
BSD
June 3, 2011 BSD
