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[PATCH v7 1/3] meson: expose knob for xmlto relative links in manuals

From
D. Ben Knoble <ben.knoble@gmail.com>
Date
Sep 11, 2026, 12:32 UTC
Message-ID
<d612de6c2de615f368b5985f200c5ea8e3116c08.1789129924.git.ben.knoble@gmail.com>
In-Reply-To
<cover.1789129924.git.ben.knoble@gmail.com>

Makefile-based builds have had this knob for most of the project's life, since a479a564dc (Documentation/Makefile: allow man.base.url.for.relative.link to be set from Make, 2009-12-03).

Meson, however, hard-codes the equivalent of $prefix/$mandir, which is not really where all the HTML docs are stored in most distro builds. Plus, this value is missing a trailing slash, so links come out broken, like this in git.1:

        1. Git User’s Manual
           /usr/share/manuser-manual.html
Of course we can do better:
1. Change the default to match Make: use file://$(htmldir)/ (with
   trailing slash!) to form a local URL pointing at the HTML docs. This
   is safe because all current uses of link:<relative> point at HTML
   docs:
      git grep 'link:[[:alnum:]]' Documentation | grep -ve html -e http
   produces only a single result (Documentation/howto/howto-index.sh)
   which can be ignored. Since nothing else [*] in the normal build sets
   MAN_BASE_URL, this seems like the right default.
2. Provide a configurable knob, just like the Makefile, so distributions
   that build with Meson (like Gentoo) can decide where to make the
   links if they need to. Those that set htmldir probably won't need to
   tweak this any further, though.
[*]: Well, Git's todo branch has a script dodoc.sh to build and archive
     docs for kernel.org; these docs are pulled by Homebrew
     installations, for example. It sets MAN_BASE_URL to "git_htmldocs",
     so the equivalent note on macOS + Homebrew is
        1. Git User’s Manual
           git-htmldocs/user-manual.html
     which is not functional either, but that's a problem for
     downstream. In any case, users can recover the right path with
     "git --html-path".
Signed-off-by: D. Ben Knoble <ben.knoble@gmail.com>
---
Notes (benknoble/commits):
    This patch is mostly because I noticed the link I added in a later patch
    didn't come out right.
    
    I did an internet search for "MAN_BASE_URL" and got no real hits, so I'm
    not sure if any distros today actually use it, but that's not a proper
    audit in that I didn't look at any distro _code_ besides Gentoo (which,
    as noted, uses Meson).
 Documentation/meson.build | 7 ++++++-
 meson_options.txt         | 2 ++
 2 files changed, 8 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
diff --git a/Documentation/meson.build b/Documentation/meson.build
index f4854f802d..cfa9c67609 100644
--- a/Documentation/meson.build
+++ b/Documentation/meson.build
@@ -379,13 +379,18 @@ foreach manpage, category : manpages
       output: fs.stem(manpage) + '.xml',
     )
 
+    man_base_url = 'file://' + htmldir + '/'
+    if get_option('man_base_url') != ''
+      man_base_url = get_option('man_base_url')
+    endif
+
     doc_targets += custom_target(
       command: [
         xmlto,
         '-m', '@INPUT0@',
         '-m', '@INPUT1@',
         '--stringparam',
-        'man.base.url.for.relative.links=' + get_option('prefix') / get_option('mandir'),
+        'man.base.url.for.relative.links=' + man_base_url,
         'man',
         manpage_xml_target,
         '-o',
diff --git a/meson_options.txt b/meson_options.txt
index dc88f130d7..d590c21648 100644
--- a/meson_options.txt
+++ b/meson_options.txt
@@ -111,6 +111,8 @@ option('default_help_format', type: 'combo', choices: ['man', 'html', 'platform'
   description: 'Default format used when executing git-help(1).')
 option('docs_backend', type: 'combo', choices: ['asciidoc', 'asciidoctor', 'auto'], value: 'auto',
   description: 'Which backend to use to generate documentation.')
+option('man_base_url', type: 'string', value: '',
+  description: 'The base URL to use for relative links in manuals')
 
 # Testing.
 option('benchmarks', type: 'feature', value: 'auto',
-- 
2.55.0.1003.g10538fe699.dirty
Previous: D. Ben KnobleNext: D. Ben Knoble
Message 68 of 74 in “Convert USE_NSEC to runtime config”
  1. 0/3 Convert USE_NSEC to runtime configD. Ben Knoble, Aug 7, 2026
  2. 1/3 meson: expose knob for xmlto relative links in manualsD. Ben Knoble, Aug 7, 2026
  3. Patrick SteinhardtAug 10, 2026
  4. 2/3 environment: align repo_config_values_init with struct declarationD. Ben Knoble, Aug 7, 2026
  5. 3/3 core: convert build-time USE_NSEC into runtime core.useNanosecD. Ben Knoble, Aug 7, 2026
  6. Junio C HamanoAug 7, 2026
  7. SZEDER GáborAug 8, 2026
  8. D. Ben KnobleAug 10, 2026
  9. D. Ben KnobleAug 10, 2026
  10. Patrick SteinhardtAug 10, 2026
  11. Ben KnobleAug 11, 2026
  12. D. Ben KnobleAug 13, 2026
  13. Patrick SteinhardtAug 14, 2026
  14. Ben KnobleAug 14, 2026
  15. Patrick SteinhardtAug 10, 2026
  16. 0/3 Convert USE_NSEC to runtime configD. Ben Knoble, Aug 14, 2026
  17. 1/3 meson: expose knob for xmlto relative links in manualsD. Ben Knoble, Aug 14, 2026
  18. 2/3 environment: align repo_config_values_init with struct declarationD. Ben Knoble, Aug 14, 2026
  19. 3/3 core: convert build-time USE_NSEC into runtime core.useNanosecD. Ben Knoble, Aug 14, 2026
  20. Junio C HamanoAug 14, 2026
  21. D. Ben KnobleAug 14, 2026
  22. 0/3 Convert USE_NSEC to runtime configD. Ben Knoble, Aug 18, 2026
  23. 1/3 meson: expose knob for xmlto relative links in manualsD. Ben Knoble, Aug 18, 2026
  24. 2/3 environment: align repo_config_values_init with struct declarationD. Ben Knoble, Aug 18, 2026
  25. 3/3 core: convert build-time USE_NSEC into runtime core.useNanosecD. Ben Knoble, Aug 18, 2026
  26. Junio C HamanoAug 18, 2026
  27. D. Ben KnobleAug 19, 2026
  28. Patrick SteinhardtAug 19, 2026
  29. D. Ben KnobleAug 19, 2026
  30. Patrick SteinhardtAug 20, 2026
  31. D. Ben KnobleAug 20, 2026
  32. Junio C HamanoAug 19, 2026
  33. D. Ben KnobleAug 19, 2026
  34. Patrick SteinhardtAug 20, 2026
  35. 0/3 Convert USE_NSEC to runtime configD. Ben Knoble, Aug 20, 2026
  36. 1/3 meson: expose knob for xmlto relative links in manualsD. Ben Knoble, Aug 20, 2026
  37. 2/3 environment: align repo_config_values_init with struct declarationD. Ben Knoble, Aug 20, 2026
  38. Junio C HamanoAug 20, 2026
  39. D. Ben KnobleAug 21, 2026
  40. 3/3 core: convert build-time USE_NSEC into runtime core.useNanosecD. Ben Knoble, Aug 20, 2026
  41. 0/3 Convert USE_NSEC to runtime configD. Ben Knoble, Aug 29, 2026
  42. 1/3 meson: expose knob for xmlto relative links in manualsD. Ben Knoble, Aug 29, 2026
  43. 2/3 environment: align repo_config_values_init with struct declarationD. Ben Knoble, Aug 29, 2026
  44. 3/3 core: convert build-time USE_NSEC into runtime core.useNanosecD. Ben Knoble, Aug 29, 2026
  45. Junio C HamanoAug 30, 2026
  46. D. Ben KnobleAug 31, 2026
  47. Patrick SteinhardtAug 31, 2026
  48. D. Ben KnobleAug 31, 2026
  49. Patrick SteinhardtAug 31, 2026
  50. Ben KnobleAug 31, 2026
  51. 0/3 Convert USE_NSEC to runtime configD. Ben Knoble, Aug 31, 2026
  52. 1/3 meson: expose knob for xmlto relative links in manualsD. Ben Knoble, Aug 31, 2026
  53. 2/3 environment: align repo_config_values_init with struct declarationD. Ben Knoble, Aug 31, 2026
  54. 3/3 core: convert build-time USE_NSEC into runtime core.useNanosecD. Ben Knoble, Aug 31, 2026
  55. Junio C HamanoSep 1, 2026
  56. D. Ben KnobleSep 1, 2026
  57. Junio C HamanoSep 1, 2026
  58. Jeff KingSep 1, 2026
  59. D. Ben KnobleSep 1, 2026
  60. Jeff KingSep 2, 2026
  61. Ben KnobleSep 2, 2026
  62. Junio C HamanoSep 2, 2026
  63. Ben KnobleSep 3, 2026
  64. Junio C HamanoSep 3, 2026
  65. Ben KnobleSep 3, 2026
  66. D. Ben KnobleAug 31, 2026
  67. 0/3 Convert USE_NSEC to runtime configD. Ben Knoble, Sep 11, 2026
  68. 1/3 meson: expose knob for xmlto relative links in manualsD. Ben Knoble, Sep 11, 2026
  69. 2/3 environment: align repo_config_values_init with struct declarationD. Ben Knoble, Sep 11, 2026
  70. 3/3 core: convert build-time USE_NSEC into runtime core.useNanosecD. Ben Knoble, Sep 11, 2026
  71. Junio C HamanoSep 11, 2026
  72. Ben KnobleSep 11, 2026
  73. Patrick SteinhardtAug 31, 2026
  74. Ben KnobleSep 1, 2026

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