How to Setup Multiple System Distro Manpages

[Brian Inglis]

On 2018-07-14 16:40, Jack wrote:
> On 07/14/2018 04:50 PM, Brian Inglis wrote:

>> I've installed a few WSL distros for comparison and downloaded a bunch of other
>> manpage sets and unpacked them:
>> $ l /proc/cygdrive/c/usr/local/share/man/
>> cat1/Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  debian@Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  man1p/Â  mann/Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  SunOS-5.10/
>> cat3/Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  Debian-8.1.0/Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  man2/Â Â  netbsd@Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  suse@
>> cat5/Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  freebsd@Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  man3/Â Â  NetBSD-7.1/Â Â Â Â  SuSE-11.3/
>> cat7/Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  FreeBSD-12-current/Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  man3p/Â  openbsd@Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  ubuntu@
>> cat8/Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  FreeBSD-ports-11.1-RELEASE/Â  man4/Â Â  OpenBSD-6.2/Â Â Â  x@
>> centos@Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  hpux@Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  man5/Â Â  ports@Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  X11R7.4/
>> CentOS-7.1/Â Â Â  HP-UX-11.22/Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  man6/Â Â  redhat@
>> darwin@Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  man0p/Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  man7/Â Â  RedHat-9-i386/
>> Darwin-7.0.1/Â  man1/Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  man8/Â Â  solaris@
>>
>> but despite reading docs, adding links and changing configs, I'm unable to get
>> man/-db to access these with or without the -m system switch.
>>
>> I know I must be missing some essential point, but searching has not come up
>> with anything to help me fix this.
>>
>> Has anyone here set this up and can suggest an approach that will work?
>>
> Purely a guess on my part, but should those directories all start with "man" (or
> "cat") ?

>From docs I have checked, man is the default name for the current system e.g.
man -m man, and freebsd, debian, etc. should be at the same level, with man?,
cat?, xx_XX, directories below that, so I have linked and moved them up and down
the hierarchy, modified /etc/man_db.conf to match, rerun mandb, and tried using
"man -m freebsd ...", etc. without any success as far as I can tell.

I have other system man and cat directories in my MANPATH at various levels
above and under Cygwin, and can access those manpages, just not the alternative
systems.
I am sure I must have missed something unobvious in the docs, and noticed
nothing about this in the books, which I have checked.

-- 
Take care. Thanks, Brian Inglis, Calgary, Alberta, Canada

--
Problem reports:       http://cygwin.com/problems.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple