xref: /freebsd/contrib/mandoc/makewhatis.8 (revision c1c95add8c80843ba15d784f95c361d795b1f593)

.\" $Id: makewhatis.8,v 1.7 2022/03/16 23:26:14 schwarze Exp $
.\"
.\" Copyright (c) 2011, 2012 Kristaps Dzonsons <kristaps@bsd.lv>
.\" Copyright (c) 2011, 2012, 2014, 2017 Ingo Schwarze <schwarze@openbsd.org>
.\"
.\" Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software for any
.\" purpose with or without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above
.\" copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies.
.\"
.\" THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES
.\" WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
.\" MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR
.\" ANY SPECIAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES
.\" WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN
.\" ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF
.\" OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE.
.\"
.Dd $Mdocdate: March 16 2022 $
.Dt MAKEWHATIS 8
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm makewhatis
.Nd index UNIX manuals
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Nm
.Op Fl aDnpQ
.Op Fl T Cm utf8
.Op Fl C Ar file
.Nm
.Op Fl aDnpQ
.Op Fl T Cm utf8
.Ar dir ...
.Nm
.Op Fl DnpQ
.Op Fl T Cm utf8
.Fl d Ar dir
.Op Ar
.Nm
.Op Fl Dnp
.Op Fl T Cm utf8
.Fl u Ar dir
.Op Ar
.Nm
.Op Fl DQ
.Fl t Ar
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The
.Nm
utility extracts keywords from
.Ux
manuals and indexes them in a database for fast retrieval by
.Xr apropos 1 ,
.Xr whatis 1 ,
and
.Xr man 1 .
.Pp
By default,
.Nm
creates a database in each
.Ar dir
using the files
.Sm off
.Sy man Ar section Li /
.Op Ar arch Li /
.Ar title . section
.Sm on
and
.Sm off
.Sy cat Ar section Li /
.Op Ar arch Li /
.Ar title . Sy 0
.Sm on
in that directory.
Existing databases are replaced.
If a directory contains no manual pages, no database is created in that
directory.
If
.Ar dir
is not provided,
.Nm
uses the default paths stipulated by
.Xr man.conf 5 .
.Pp
The arguments are as follows:
.Bl -tag -width "-C file"
.It Fl a
Use all directories and files found below
.Ar dir ... .
.It Fl C Ar file
Specify an alternative configuration
.Ar file
in
.Xr man.conf 5
format.
.It Fl D
Display all files added or removed to the index.
With a second
.Fl D ,
also show all keywords added for each file.
.It Fl d Ar dir
Merge (remove and re-add)
.Ar
to the database in
.Ar dir .
.It Fl n
Do not create or modify any database; scan and parse only,
and print manual page names and descriptions to standard output.
.It Fl p
Print warnings about potential problems with manual pages
to the standard error output.
.It Fl Q
Quickly build reduced-size databases
by reading only the NAME sections of manuals.
The resulting databases will usually contain names and descriptions only.
.It Fl T Cm utf8
Use UTF-8 encoding instead of ASCII for strings stored in the databases.
.It Fl t Ar
Check the given
.Ar files
for potential problems.
Implies
.Fl a ,
.Fl n ,
and
.Fl p .
All diagnostic messages are printed to the standard output;
the standard error output is not used.
.It Fl u Ar dir
Remove
.Ar
from the database in
.Ar dir .
If that causes the database to become empty, also delete the database file.
.El
.Pp
If fatal parse errors are encountered while parsing, the offending file
is printed to stderr, omitted from the index, and the parse continues
with the next input file.
.Sh ENVIRONMENT
.Bl -tag -width MANPATH
.It Ev MANPATH
A colon-separated list of directories to create databases in.
Ignored if a
.Ar dir
argument or the
.Fl t
option is specified.
.El
.Sh FILES
.Bl -tag -width Ds
.It Pa mandoc.db
A database of manpages relative to the directory of the file.
This file is portable across architectures and systems, so long as the
manpage hierarchy it indexes does not change.
.It Pa /etc/man.conf
The default
.Xr man 1
configuration file.
.El
.Sh EXIT STATUS
The
.Nm
utility exits with one of the following values:
.Pp
.Bl -tag -width Ds -compact
.It 0
No errors occurred.
.It 5
Invalid command line arguments were specified.
No input files have been read.
.It 6
An operating system error occurred, for example memory exhaustion or an
error accessing input files.
Such errors cause
.Nm
to exit at once, possibly in the middle of parsing or formatting a file.
The output databases are corrupt and should be removed.
.El
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr apropos 1 ,
.Xr man 1 ,
.Xr whatis 1 ,
.Xr man.conf 5
.Sh HISTORY
A
.Nm
utility first appeared in
.Bx 2 .
It was rewritten in
.Xr perl 1
for
.Ox 2.7
and in C for
.Ox 5.6 .
.Pp
The
.Ar dir
argument first appeared in
.Nx 1.0 ;
the options
.Fl dpt
in
.Ox 2.7 ;
the option
.Fl u
in
.Ox 3.4 ;
and the options
.Fl aCDnQT
in
.Ox 5.6 .
.Sh AUTHORS
.An -nosplit
.An Bill Joy
wrote the original
.Bx
.Nm
in February 1979,
.An Marc Espie
started the Perl version in 2000,
and the current version of
.Nm
was written by
.An Kristaps Dzonsons Aq Mt kristaps@bsd.lv
and
.An Ingo Schwarze Aq Mt schwarze@openbsd.org .