From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 Galeon/1.2.2 (X11; Linux i686; U;) Gecko/20020510 Description of problem: Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Run xman Actual Results: Got error message: Xman Error: No manual pages found. Expected Results: Expected to see the xman window. Additional info: I straced xman, discovered it was looking for a (non-existant) /etc/manpath.config. I tried linking /etc/man.config to /etc/manpath.config, but no luck. (Incidentally, the man page for xman says it should be looking at /etc/man.config...). Standard man command works fine.
This one drives me nuts. ;o) The problem is that XFree86 xman assumes a specific name and location for the man config file based on the OS being used. This is totally incorrect, since there is no standard which dictates the name and/or location of the man config file. In order to ensure we are following standards, I consulted the Linux Standard Base (LSB), the File Heirarchy Standard (FHS), and also the Single Unix Specification version 3 (SuSv3) as well as discussing it with Matt Wilson whom is our local expert in these sort of matters. Aparently, /etc/manpage.configurationfile is acceptable as far as I can tell, which is IMHO a bummer since it lacks an official standard to pin it down. XFree86 defaults to looking for man.conf in Linux, however ours is called man.config (and has been for ages). We have patched this numerous times in XFree86, however continuous changes to the files upstream have caused it to continuously break. IMHO, the real problem here is twofold: 1) The lack of an official standard 2) XFree86's bad assumption of the location of the config file, and lack of build time configurability via Imake for this. I'm going to try to make this an Imake configuration option for once and for all, and try to get it included in XFree86 4.3.0 stock so that we dont have xman break every 6 months. Thanks for reporting.
I rewrote the xman Imakefile to define MANCONF there, instead of it getting defined in version.h, and I made the default man.conf, with an override for both Red Hat Linux (man.config) and Debian (manpath.config). I've sent the patch upstream in hopes they'll apply it and end this maddness. ;o) XFree86-4.2.0-xman-manconf.patch in rawhide.