gno/usr.bin/man/makewhatis.8

.TH MAKEWHATIS 1 "Commands and Applications" "29 May 1994" "Version 1.1"
.SH NAME
.B makewhatis
\- generate the whatis database file
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B makewhatis
[
.I -c
|
.I -C
] [
.I "-f outfile"
] [
.I "-l logfile"
] [
.I "-o dbfile"
] [
.I "-p path"
] [
.I "-v n"
] [
.I "-V"
]
.SH DESCRIPTION
.B makewhatis
generates the whatis database for
.BR whatis "(1) and " apropos "(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
By default,
.B makewhatis
makes use of one of the environment variables \fIMANPATH\fR, \fIUSRMAN\fR,
or \fIMANDIR\fR, 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 spaces), then whatis databases will be generated
in all of the specified paths.
.LP
The routines used are compatible with man pages in
.BR nroff ,
.BR aroff ,
.BR compress ", or"
.BR freeze
format, as well as text versions of manual pages in the man/catX hierarchy.
.B Makewhatis
assumes that the suffixes \fI.Z\fR and \fI.F\fR are are appended to the
chapter number on file names when those files are in
.BR compress " or " freeze
format, respectively.  (For example, a compressed file would be expected
to have a file name similar to
.I foo.3.Z
or \fIbar.3v.Z\fR.)
Any files using the
.I ".l"
(ell) suffix are ignored.  All suffix tests are case insensitive.
.LP
By default,
.B makewhatis
will only use files in the man/manX hierarchy in the creation of the
database.  However, since many Gno programmers are providing only text
versions of their man pages, invoking
.B makewhatis
with the
.I -c
flag will add descriptions for all files in the man/catX hierarchy that
don't have a counterpart in the man/manX hierarchy.  This conditional
eliminates the parsing of files in man/catX generated by
.BR catman (1).
.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 be sorted
after
.B makewhatis
is finished.  See
.BR sort (1).
.SH OPTIONS
.I -c
will check man/catX sub-directories as well as man/manX
.LP
.I -C
will check
.BR only
man/catX sub-directories, not man/manX sub-directories.
.LP
.I "-f outfile"
causes the
.B makewhatis
status output to be placed in \fIoutfile\fR.  Invoking
.I "-f"
without
.I "-v2"
produces no output.
.LP
.I "-l logfile"
will cause any error messages to be printed to \fIlogfile\fR.  Invoking
.I "-l"
without either
.I "-v1"
or
.I "-v2"
produces no output.
.LP
.I "-o dbfile"
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
.I dbfile
, this will result in that file being overwritten for each space-delimited
entry in \fIMANPATH\fR.
.LP
.I "-p path"
overrides the environment variables
.I MANPATH
et al for determining for which manual page hierarchies the databases must
be generated.
.LP
.I "-v n"
creates verbose status messages during execution.  For n=1 only error
messages are printed out.  For n=2, both error and status messages are
printed.
.LP
.I -V
will show version and usage information, then exit.
.SH ENVIRONMENT
\fIMANPATH\fR, \fIUSRMAN\fR, \fIMANDIR\fR:
.br
Unless the
.I -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.  While
.B makewhatis
will correctly handle
.I ~
and
.I .
being part of these paths, it will not correctly handle \fI..\fR.
.SH CAVEATS
.B Makewhatis
assumes that the programs
.BR aroff ,
.BR compress ", and"
.BR freeze
are available to the executing shell via the \fIsystem\fR(2) call.
Nroff is not used and need not be available.
.LP
Because
.B makewhatis
looks for the string
.I NAME
and one of \fI.SH\fR, \fISYNOPSIS\fR, or
.I DESCRIPTION
when processing files, it can be confused by missing fields or
some methods of formatting.  For example, if in a man/catX page
.I NAME
is underlined by repeated backspace-_ sequences, then the generated
description for that particular man page is unpredictable,
though usually blank.  When parsing man 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
.I NAME
to be in the format:
.nf
        NAME
            <command> - <brief description>
.fi
If this is not so (ignoring whitespace), then the output is unpredictable.
.LP
Man pages must be CR-deliminated.
.LP
If aroff source is compressed or frozen, the database entry for that
page is unpredictable.
.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
.I 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
.I .BR
in the output.  This was not fixed due to the overhead of having to
check for such a condition.
.SH FILES
.nf
/usr/sbin/makewhatis -- whatis database generator
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 man (1),
.BR nroff (1),
.BR whatis (1)
.SH AUTHOR
Written by Devin Reade <glyn@cs.ualberta.ca> for the Apple IIgs and Gno.