Re: git help error

From: Luciano Rocha <luciano@eurotux.com>
Date: Dec 4, 2007, 20:06 UTC
Message-ID: <20071204200625.GA32717@bit.office.eurotux.com>
In-Reply-To: <863auiw86m.fsf@lola.quinscape.zz>

On Tue, Dec 04, 2007 at 08:50:41PM +0100, David Kastrup wrote:

Show 15 quoted lines

> Luciano Rocha <strange@nsk.no-ip.org> writes:
> 
> > On Tue, Dec 04, 2007 at 11:40:15AM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> >
> >> Having said that, I do not mind accepting a patch that prepends the
> >> nonlocal path to MANPATH in help.c::show_man_page().
> >
> > Actually, current man utilities locate the manual page by looking where
> > the executable is, if MANPATH isn't defined (tested in Linux and
> > Darwin).
> >
> > So, "unset MANPATH; man git-add" should be sufficient.
> 
> That only works for paths registered in /etc/manpath.config (or an
> equivalent config file depending on system/distribution).

Err, no. I doubt my ~/opt/noarch/.../...; ~/opt/`uname -i`/git/; etc., are pre-registered by my Linux distro or OS X 10.[45].

man man:
       If you specify the -M pathlist option, pathlist  is  a  colon-separated
       list of the directories that man searches.

       If  you  don’t specify -M but set the MANPATH environment variable, the
       value of that  variable  is  the  list  of  the  directories  that  man
       searches.

       If  you  don’t  specify  an  explicit path list with -M or MANPATH, man
       develops its own path list based on the contents of  the  configuration
       file /etc/man.config.  The MANPATH statements in the configuration file
       identify particular directories to include in the search path.
...
       In addition, for each directory in the command search path (we’ll  call
       it  a  "command  directory")  for  which  you do not have a MANPATH_MAP
       statement, man automatically looks for a manual page directory "nearby"
       namely as a subdirectory in the command directory itself or in the par-
       ent directory of the command directory.

So, according to the last paragraph, and assuming no -M argument and no MANPATH environment variable are defined, man should be able to find the manual pages for git commands if they're in PATH.

-- 
Luciano Rocha <luciano@eurotux.com>
Eurotux Informática, S.A. <http://www.eurotux.com/>