Re^2: docs for CPAN

My system doesn't seem to have a $MANPATH environment variable.

echo $MANPATH
[download]

yields a blank line! Yet many man commands produce output.

man man doesn't include anything about the file naming conventions for man, nor about formatting codes although the conversion from .pod would hopefully take care of that...

Anyway thanks for answering,
cmac

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Re^3: docs for CPAN by jethro (Monsignor) on Feb 09, 2009 at 03:33 UTC
Check out the command 'manpath' which is used by 'man' to get the paths to search for manpages (at least on linux) Usually at the end of every man page is a paragraph 'See also' where you can find the names of other man pages that are thematically linked. In my case I see nroff mentioned (which is the name of the utility and of the language that the man pages use). Also I see man(7) which is another man page of man, just in another section. You can read that by issuing 'man 7 man' (if your version of man is similar to mine)	[reply]
Re^4: docs for CPAN by cmac (Monk) on Feb 09, 2009 at 16:57 UTC
All documentation to the contrary, setting $MANPATH in my login file did not solve my problem of 'man' not being able to see the page posted by 'sudo make install'. But the 'man 7 man' output mentioned '/etc/manpath.config'. Adding a line `MANDATORY_MANPATH /usr/local/share/man/` [download] to this file did the trick. It made the documentation of all of the Perl modules that I've installed over the years, visible with 'man' as well as with 'perldoc'. What Unix/Linux needs is not so much more drivers for trendy new devices, as reform/centralization of its sprawling mess of configuration files and diffuse technical details. Make new jobs by improving Unix/Linux infrastructure! Add this to the stimulus package! :-) cmac	[reply] [d/l]
Re^5: docs for CPAN by jethro (Monsignor) on Feb 10, 2009 at 02:20 UTC
Did you check MANPATH after you set it? There are two traps you might have fallen into: 1. If you have sh or bash as login shell, you need to use 'export' so that the environment variable gets distributed from the login shell to all subshells. I.e. `export MANPATH=${MANPATH}:/usr/local/share/man/` 2. Depending on your login shell the file to put the command into might have the name '.login' or (in case of bash) '.profile' I'm pretty sure that if you had MANPATH set as intented you would have seen your manpage.	[reply] [d/l]