.TH MAKEWHATIS 8 "28 March 1998" GNO "System Administration"
.SH NAME
.B makewhatis
\- generate the whatis database file
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B makewhatis
[
.B -c
|
.B -C
] [
.BI -f " outfile"
] [
.BI -l " logfile"
] [
.BI -o " dbfile"
] [
.BI -p " path"
] [
.BI -v " n"
] [
.B -V
]
.SH DESCRIPTION
This manual page documents
.B makewhatis
version 3.1.
.LP
.B makewhatis
generates the whatis database for
.BR apropos (1),
.BR man (1),
and
.BR whatis (1).
This database is a text file containing line oriented records.  Each record
contains a man page name, the section number, and the brief description.
.LP
.B Makewhatis
makes use of one of the environment variables
.BR MANPATH ,
.BR USRMAN ,
or
.BR MANDIR ,
in the listed order of preference.  It will use this
environment variable to determine for which manual pages the whatis
database should be built.  If the environment variable contains more than
one path (delimited by either colons or spaces), 
then whatis databases will be generated
in all of the specified paths.  This may be overridden by the
.BR -p
flag.
.LP
By default,
.BR makewhatis
will generate its database from manual pages existing in the
.IB manpath_component /man X
subdirectories (where
.I X
is the section number)
that are either
.BR aroff
or
.BR nroff
source files.
However, since many GNO programmers are providing only preformatted
text versions of their man pages, using the
.I -c
flag will cause
.B makewhatis
to also use manual pages in the
.IB manpath_component /cat X
subdirectories when building the database.
If there is a corresponding manual page in both the
.BI man X
and
.BI cat X
subdirectory, then only the page in the
.BI man X
subdirectory will be used.
.LP
Manual pages which are
.BR nroff
source files in the
.BI man X
subdirectory, or are preformatted text in the
.BI cat X
subdirectory may be compressed by either
.BR compress (1),
.BR freeze (1),
or
.BR gzip (1),
provided that the suffixes on the compressed file are
.BR ".Z" ,
.BR ".F" ,
and
.BR ".gz" ,
respectively.  The case of the suffix is significant.
.BR Aroff
source files
.I "must not"
be compressed by any method.
.LP
All
.BR aroff
link files are ignored.  A file is assumed to be an
.BR aroff
link file if it ends in
.B ".l"
(dot lower-case ell) and is not within a
.BR manl 
(man-ell) or a
.BR catl
(cat-ell) subdirectory.
.LP
Note that the lines in the whatis database file are created in the order
that the man pages are found.  It is suggested that the database files
be sorted after
.B makewhatis
is finished.  See
.BR sort (1)
or
.BR msort (1) .
.SH OPTIONS
.IP "\fB\-c\fP"
will check 
.BI cat X
subdirectories as well as 
.BI man X
subdirectories.
.IP \fB\-C\fP
will check
.I only
.BI cat X
subdirectories,
.I not 
.BI man X
subdirectories.
.IP "\fB-f\fR \fIoutfile\fR"
causes the
.B makewhatis
status output to be placed in 
.IR outfile .
Invoking
.B -f
without
.B -v2
produces no output.
.IP "\fB-l\fR \fIlogfile\fR"
will cause any error messages to be printed to
.IR logfile .
Invoking
.B -l
without either
.B -v1
or
.B -v2
produces no output.
.IP "\fB-o\fR \fIdbfile\fR"
will make
.B makewhatis
use
.I dbfile
as the name for the generated whatis databases.  While it is possible to
use a full pathname for
.IR dbfile ,
this will result in that file being overwritten for each colon- or
space-delimited entry in
.BR MANPATH .
.IP "\fB-p\fR \fIpath\fR"
overrides the environment variables
.B MANPATH
et al for determining for which manual page hierarchies the databases must
be generated.
.IP "\fB-v\fR \fIn\fR"
creates verbose status messages during execution.  For 
.IR n =1
only major error messages are printed out.  For 
.IR n =2,
the names of processed files are also printed.  For
.IR n =3,
the output becomes very verbose with excessive status information, including
listing any missing subdirectores.
.IP \fB-V\fR
will show version and usage information, then exit.
.SH ENVIRONMENT
.BR MANPATH
.br
.BR USRMAN
.br
.BR MANDIR
.RS
Unless the
.B -p
flag is used,
.B makewhatis
will use the first that it finds of these environment variables for
determining where database files should be generated.  The search
is done in the order shown. While
.B makewhatis
will correctly handle
.RB ` ~ '
and
.RB ` . '
being part of these paths, it will not correctly handle
.RB ` .. '.
.sp 1
Either colons or spaces can be used to delimit the individual paths.
If the value of the selected environment variable contains no spaces
nor
.B /
characters (such as
.BR :usr:local:man ),
it is assumed to be a single path, not a list of paths.
.sp 1
Although
.B makewhatis
allows
.BR USRMAN
and
.BR MANDIR
to be each a colon- or space-separated list of pathnames,
it is recommended that for compatibility with 
.BR man 
(version 2.1 and earlier) these variables, if used, should be
a single pathname.
.RE
.SH CAVEATS
.B Makewhatis
assumes that the programs
.BR aroff ,
.BR compress ,
.BR freeze ,
and
.BR gzip
are available to the executing shell via the 
.BR system (2)
call.
.BR Nroff
is not used and need not be available.
.LP
Because
.B makewhatis
looks for the string
.B NAME
and one of 
.BR .SH ,
.BR SYNOPSIS ,
or
.B DESCRIPTION
when processing files, it can be confused by missing fields or
some methods of formatting.  For example, if in a preformatted manual page
.B NAME
is underlined by repeated backspace-_ sequences, then the generated
description for that particular man page is unpredictable,
though usually blank.  When parsing preformatted manual pages,
.B makewhatis
will understand the common double- and quadruple-boldfaced
subheadings, provided
that the backspace character (control-H) is used to achieve this effect.
.LP
Similarily,
.B makewhatis
expects the subheading
.B NAME
to be in the format:
.nf
        NAME
            \fIcommand_name\fR [...] - \fIbrief description\fR
.fi
If this is not so (ignoring whitespace), then the output is unpredictable.
.LP
Man pages must be CR-delimited (ASCII 015, or control\-M).
.LP
Where unpredictable output has been mentioned above, this means that
the description in the database file will either be blank or random
text from the man page.  It
.I "does not"
mean that system integrity or that the remainder of the database file
has been affected.
.LP
Any text appearing after
.B NAME
on the NAME header line will be ignored.
.SH BUGS
.B Makewhatis
reads files in blocks of 1024 characters.
If formatting information is split by the end
of the input buffer, you may see formatting infomation such as
.B .BR
in the output.  This was not fixed due to the overhead of having to
check for such a condition.
.LP
Please report any additional bugs to Devin Reade, <gdr@trenco.gno.org>.
.SH FILES
.nf
/usr/[share/]man/whatis -- the whatis database
.fi
.SH SEE ALSO
.BR apropos (1),
.BR aroff (1),
.BR catman (1),
.BR compress (1),
.BR freeze (1),
.BR gzip (1),
.BR man (1),
.BR nroff (1),
.BR whatis (1)