manwhich: Deriving MANPATH from PATH [PSARC/2007/688 FastTrack timeout 12/19/2007]

[Mike Gerdts]

On Dec 17, 2007 6:22 PM, Edward Pilatowicz <edward.pilatowicz at sun.com> wrote:
> i really like the suggested manpatch search mechanism.
> it should make the management of manpath much easier.
>
> that said, currently i have some MANPATH entries (ie,
> entries in my MANPATH environment variable) which aren't
> associated with any PATH entries.  so to switch to this
> new mechanism i'd have to drop these entries.  so what
> i was wondering is would it be possible to have some
> new man(1) cli option that would display the current
> dynamic man search path in the format of a MANPATH variable?
> this would allow me to do something like the following
> in my profile:
>
>         PATH="<my_desired_path>
>         unset MANPATH
>         MANPATH=`man --found-dynamic-manpath-search-directories`
>         MANPATH=$MANPATH:<my extra junk>
>         export MANPATH
>
> thoughts?
> ed

Interesting idea.  As others have stated, this would also be useful
for debugging or understanding path to manpath translations.  How does
this usage look?

$ PATH=/usr/gnu/bin:/usr/xpg4/bin:/usr/ucb man -p
/usr/gnu/share/man:/usr/share/man,1:/usr/share/man,1b:/usr/share/man,<lots
of sections>

$ cd /usr/sbin
$ man -p ./ping
./ping /usr/share/man,1m

$ man -p /usr/sbin/ping /usr/gnu/bin/ls
/usr/sbin/ping /usr/share/man,1m
/usr/gnu/bin/ls /usr/gnu/share/man

Note that the output would expose the internals of duplicate avoidance
logic that I've added, which could be ugly.  From a debugging
perspective, it could be useful information.  It would also give the
ability to set up a functional (but ugly) MANPATH.

-- 
Mike Gerdts
http://mgerdts.blogspot.com/