manpath change for ports ?

[Steve Kargl]

On Fri, Mar 10, 2017 at 05:03:08PM +0100, Tijl Coosemans wrote:
> On Fri, 10 Mar 2017 10:50:39 +0100 Dag-Erling Smørgrav <des at des.no> wrote:
> > John Baldwin <jhb at freebsd.org> writes:
> >> I wouldn't even mind if we had both /usr/local/man and /usr/local/share/man
> >> so long as our default MANPATH included both if that means applying fewer
> >> patches to ports.  
> > 
> > The default MANPATH is constructed dynamically from PATH:
> > 
> >      1.   From each component of the user's PATH for the first of:
> >           -   pathname/man
> >           -   pathname/MAN
> >           -   If pathname ends with /bin: pathname/../man
> >           Note: Special logic exists to make /bin and /usr/bin look in
> >           /usr/share/man for manual files.
> > 
> > If we change this to:
> > 
> >      1.   From each component of the user's PATH for the first of:
> >           -   pathname/man
> >           -   pathname/MAN
> >           -   If pathname ends with /bin or /sbin: pathname/../man and
> >               pathname/../share/man
> > 
> > we wouldn't need any "special logic", but I really don't like the idea
> > of having different ports installing man pages in different locations.
> 
> I grepped the ports tree and found nearly 5700 ports.  That's a lot to
> change all at once but it may be doable.  It depends on how much fallout
> there is in the exp-run.

ln -s /usr/local/share/man /usr/local/man

should cause the manpages to land where you want.  Then port
maintainers can sweep ports/ to allow for the removal of symlink. 

On a side note, it is unfortunate that one cannot set the
environmental variable MANPATH as documented without either
a mysterious vanishing of man pages or an idiotic warning
appear with each invocation of man, apropos, ... 

-- 
Steve
20161221 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbCHE-hONow