Bug 1663919

Description of problem:

Man pages in section 3pm are prioritized before those in section 3p, so trying to read the man page for the standard POSIX "open" function from libc shows a Perl doc instead.


Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):

man-db-2.8.4-1.fc29.x86_64


How reproducible:

Always.


Steps to Reproduce:
1. man open -> shows open(2) kernel doc, oops, I want the libc version.
2. man 3 open -> shows open(3pm) Perl module, wtf?
3. man 3p open -> shows the page I actually want.


Actual results:

You have to know that glibc's man pages are really in section 3p not 3, otherwise you can't find them.


Expected results:

"man 3 open" should find t he expected page. Ideally "man open" would find it too, but for some reason we still prioritize the kernel syscall pages.

Most devs are looking for the public libc function, not the syscall, and not the Perl module. But there's no open(3) page, and asking for it gets the Perl doc.

It seems reasonable for people looking for the Perl docs to use "perldoc open" or "man 3pm open", so it doesn't need to be easier to find that than to find open(3).

Additional info:

This can easily be fixed by adding 3pm to the SECTION directive in man_db.conf, so that it comes after 3p:

--- /etc/man_db.conf    2018-07-30 15:18:57.000000000 +0100
+++ /etc/man_db.conf    2019-01-07 09:55:00.913453341 +0000
@@ -108,7 +108,7 @@
 # particular order. Sections with extensions should usually be adjacent to
 # their main section (e.g. "1 1mh 8 ...").
 #
-SECTION                1 1p 8 2 3 3p 4 5 6 7 9 0p n l p o 1x 2x 3x 4x 5x 6x 7x 8x
+SECTION                1 1p 8 2 3 3p 3pm 4 5 6 7 9 0p n l p o 1x 2x 3x 4x 5x 6x 7x 8x
 #
 #---------------------------------------------------------
 # Range of terminal widths permitted when displaying cat pages. If the


Please consider making this change in Fedora.