Re: Shouldn't 'man' depend on 'col'? Shouldn't 'col' be easier to find?

["Chris J. Breisch" <chris dot ml at breisch dot org>]

At Tuesday, July 8, 2014, 12:15:22 PM, Marco Atzeri wrote:


> On 08/07/2014 17:47, Jack Duthen wrote:
>> Problem #1:
>> ----------
>> After I loaded a few cygwin packages, I got this:
>>
>> $ man bash | wc
>> man: can't execute col: No such file or directory
>>
>> The "man" command works perfectly when the stdout is NOT redirected,
>> but, when sent to a pipe or a file, the command "man" fails with the
>> above message.
>>
>> Question #1:
>> Shouldn't the 'man' function/package depend on the 'col' function/package?
>>
>> Problem #2
>> ----------
>> To solve my 'man' problem,I tried to find the 'col' command.
>>
>> I launched the standard interface (setup.exe) and entered 'col' in the
>> 'Search' text field.
>>
>> It gave me a list of packages, mainly related to 'colamd', 'colorgc',
>> 'protocol' stuff, 'colored' stuff, 'texlive-collection' stuff,
>> 'colordiff'...
>>
>> but no clear link to the missing 'col.exe'.

> wrong way. Setup search only package names, not their content

> Best with
> https://cygwin.com/packages/
> https://cygwin.com/cgi-bin2/package-grep.cgi?grep=col.exe&arch=x86

> also with
> $ cygcheck -p col.exe
> Found 4 matches for col.exe
> netpbm-10.61.02-1 - Toolkit for manipulation of graphic images
> netpbm-debuginfo-10.61.02-1 - Debug information for Toolkit for 
> manipulation of graphic images
> util-linux-2.21.2-1 - Random collection of Linux utilities
> util-linux-debuginfo-2.21.2-1 - Debug information for Random collection
> of Linux utilities

> of course "col" is too short to be meaningful, "col.exe"
> is a better catch.

>> Question #3
>> To get a 'man' that works when piped, is there a better way than
>> loading this "random" collection of utilities?
>>
>> Am I the only one to get that problem???

> util-linux is a popular package, so the issue was not yet noticed.

> man was recently changed, so this dependency was likely missed,
> specially as it seems hidden inside the man binary.

Yes,  this is true. I'll add it. I'm collecting a few things together,
and trying to get the DB creation to work a little faster as well.

-- 
 Chris J. Breisch



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