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

[Chris Goedde]

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.

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.

-- 
Chris Goedde

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