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 initialization, 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)