[OS X TeX] MANPATH, MANPATH_MAP and i-Packages

[Gerben Wierda]

On Sep 8, 2006, at 15:45, Chris Goedde wrote:

> On Sep 8, 2006, at 5:45 AM, Bruno Voisin wrote:
>
>> I think this issue has already been raised, but I'm not quite sure  
>> what the answer/solution was.
>>
>
> Yes, this came up a little over a month ago. There should be some  
> discussion in the archives.
>
>> Problem is, the other i-Packages put their executables inside  
>> /usr/local/bin and their man pages inside /usr/local/man, not  
>> /usr/local/share/man as expected by man.conf. Hence, the man pages  
>> are not found. I realized this when trying "man tiff2ps", where  
>> /usr/local/bin/tiff2ps and /usr/local/man/man1/tiff2ps.1 had indeed  
>> been installed by the libtiff i-Package (aka TIFF Reference Library).
>
> In my view, these installers are broken. The default configuration of  
> Mac OS X is to map /usr/local/bin -> /usr/local/share/man, and  
> installers should respect this. So the "real" fix is to fix the  
> installers.

It is not so much the installer that is broken, but the fac tthat  
theinstallers ships software in its default distribution setup. For  
much of the software, the default is /usr/local/bin + /usr/local/man

Changing that would mean i-Package maintainers (like me) have to do all  
kind of non-default stuff while compiling/setting up. Feel free to  
volunteer ;-)

Note: Apple ships this /usr/local/share/man setting now, but different  
settings heve been available in the past. Apple ships an empty  
/usr/local and probably is not interested at all what is happening  
inside.

> I think the choice of /usr/local/share/man over /usr/local/man is to  
> keep the structure of /usr/local parallel to /usr. There is no  
> /usr/man, all the man pages for /usr/bin are in /usr/share/man.
>
>> What would be the best solution:
>>
>> - Comment out the offending line
>>
>>> MANPATH_MAP	/usr/local/bin		/usr/local/share/man
>>
>> in man.conf, so that the default association of /usr/local/bin and  
>> /usr/local/man is restored.
>
> This will lead to the same problem if you later install something that  
> puts its man pages in /usr/local/share/man, so it doesn't seem like a  
> good solution.
>
>>
>> - Or create a symlink /usr/local/share/man to /usr/local/man.
>
> After some googling, I came across this page:  
> <http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html#USRLOCALSHARE1>, which  
> seems to support the symlink solution. There's also this gnu page:  
> <http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/Directory- 
> Variables.html>, which talks about the standard location of many  
> things in the / hierarchy under unix (at least in the gnu view!).
>
>>
>> Any thoughts?
>
> When I came up against this, I just moved everything from  
> /usr/local/man to /usr/local/share/man. Obviously, this is a fragile  
> solution, you have to repeat it if you install some more man pages in  
> /usr/local/man.

Unless you make the symlink.

Hmm, I wonder if I should follow that route.

G

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