Bug 2404910

Summary:	groff: Add man(7) to groff-base
Product:	[Fedora] Fedora	Reporter:	ricky.tigg
Component:	groff	Assignee:	Nikola Forró <nforro>
Status:	NEW ---	QA Contact:	Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity:	unspecified	Docs Contact:
Priority:	unspecified
Version:	rawhide	CC:	arjun, codonell, dj, fberat, fweimer, jchaloup, kasal, ljavorsk, nforro, pfrankli, ralvaro
Target Milestone:	---
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	Unspecified
OS:	Unspecified
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:	man-pages-6.13-5.fc45	Doc Type:	---
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:		Type:	Bug
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description ricky.tigg 2025-10-18 11:47:50 UTC

Description of problem:

Manual man.7.gz packaged in wrong package

---

How reproducible:

$ sudo mandb -c
Processing manual pages under /usr/share/man...
[...]
mandb: can't resolve man7/groff_man.7
mandb: warning: /usr/share/man/man7/man.man-pages.7.gz: bad symlink or ROFF `.so' request
mandb: can't resolve man7/groff_man.7
mandb: warning: /usr/share/man/man7/man.7.gz: bad symlink or ROFF `.so' request
[...]

$ man 7 man
man: can't resolve man7/groff_man.7
No manual entry for man in section 7

---

Context

 None of the packages groff and man-pages-ja-20231115 that are informed by 'dnf provides *groff_man.7.gz' as providing the resource is installed.

$ man groff_man
No manual entry for groff_man

$ file -b /usr/share/man/man7/man.7.gz
symbolic link to /etc/alternatives/man.7.gz

 Extract of man-page MAN(1)
"7  Miscellaneous  [...] man(7), groff(7), man-pages(7)"

$ gzip -dc /usr/share/man/man7/man.7.gz
.so man7/groff_man.7

---

Conclusion

 /usr/share/man/man7/man.7.gz file

 It can be deduced that the
- package the file is part of is not correct.
- file is expected to be packaged in the groff and man-pages-ja-20231115 packages instead of the man-pages package.

Comment 1 Florian Weimer 2025-11-28 14:33:32 UTC

It's part of groff:

# rpm -qf /usr/share/man/man7/groff_man.7.gz
groff-1.23.0-10.fc43.x86_64

Let's ask  the groff maintainer if we can move this manual page into groff-base. Would this be a possible way forward?

Comment 2 Nikola Forró 2025-11-28 15:49:19 UTC

The man page is part of both man-pages and mandoc, hence the alternatives:

https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/man-pages/blob/rawhide/f/man-pages.spec#_96
https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/mandoc/blob/rawhide/f/mandoc.spec#_91

I can see that man-pages upstream has replaced its content with a link to groff_man.7, which is a bit unfortunate.
I guess moving groff_man.7 to groff-base and making it a proper alternative for man.7 is the way to go, with man.7 being removed from man-pages at the same time.

Comment 3 Florian Weimer 2025-11-28 16:19:34 UTC

(In reply to Nikola Forró from comment #2)
> The man page is part of both man-pages and mandoc, hence the alternatives:
> 
> https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/man-pages/blob/rawhide/f/man-pages.
> spec#_96
> https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/mandoc/blob/rawhide/f/mandoc.spec#_91
> 
> I can see that man-pages upstream has replaced its content with a link to
> groff_man.7, which is a bit unfortunate.
> I guess moving groff_man.7 to groff-base and making it a proper alternative
> for man.7 is the way to go, with man.7 being removed from man-pages at the
> same time.

I think this means that we can already delete /usr/share/man/man7/man.7.gz from man-pages today because it's mostly broken as-is?

Comment 4 Nikola Forró 2025-11-28 16:41:50 UTC

(In reply to Florian Weimer from comment #3)
> I think this means that we can already delete /usr/share/man/man7/man.7.gz
> from man-pages today because it's mostly broken as-is?

Yes, I think so.

Comment 5 Florian Weimer 2026-06-24 17:58:17 UTC

I believe I completed the man-pages part of this. I needed to versions. Only man-pages-6.13-5.fc45 removes the alternative on updates.

I believe you need to add

Conflicts: man-pages-6.13-5

to groff-base once you start installing %{_mandir}/man7/man.7.gz.