Re: Does /etc/profile need to set MANPATH?

["Larry Hall (Cygwin)" <reply-to-list-only-lh at cygwin dot com>]

On 05/15/2014 09:39 AM, Corinna Vinschen wrote:
> On May 15 09:17, Chris J. Breisch wrote:
> > Chris J. Breisch wrote:
> > > Corinna Vinschen wrote:
> > > > On May 14 18:52, Achim Gratz wrote:
> > > > > Corinna Vinschen writes:
> > > > > > Yes, this might be better discussed in cygwin-apps. I guess the setting
> > > > > > of MANPATH is mainly historical.
> > > > > I'd be happy to not set MANPATH in /etc/profile if we no longer need it
> > > > > for the standard installation.
> > > >
> > > > I'm wondering if setting MANPATH was really ever required for the old
> > > > man either. In a tcsh environment, MANPATH is not set by default.
> > > > If you install the openssl package, MANPATH is set like this (in
> > > > /etc/profile.d/openssh.csh):
> > > >
> > > > if ( ! $?MANPATH ) setenv MANPATH ""
> > > > setenv MANPATH "${MANPATH}:/usr/ssl/man"
> > > >
> > > > which results in:
> > > >
> > > > $ echo $MANPATH
> > > > :/usr/ssl/man
> > > >
> > > > I have neither problems to see the man pages in the default paths nor
> > > > problems to see the openssl man pages.
> > >
> > > Well, /etc/profile and /etc/profile.d/openssh.sh add a few more folders
> > > to MANPATH in bash. If your man pages are working, then we probably
> > > don't need MANPATH.
> > >
> > > I'm guessing though that if you unset MANPATH, you can't see the man
> > > pages in /usr/ssl/man. The new man from man-db doesn't find them either,
> > > however.
> > >
> > > But I think the proper solution to that is to add the appropriate lines
> > > to man_db.conf rather than to force something into MANPATH. OTOH, we
> > > already have the openssh.[c]sh files working, so maybe it's easier to
> > > continue with that, rather than modifying the OpenSSL package to update
> > > man_db.conf.
> >
> > Or I could just add the values to man_db.conf, regardless of whether OpenSSL
> > is installed. It's not going to hurt anything to have them there.
>
> You still have to be able to handle MANPATH.  Unfortunately the man page
> of man-db is a little tight-lipped on how MANPATH is handled exactly,
> other than that "its value is used as the path to search  for manual
> pages."
>
> Whatever man does with MANPATH, it doesn't drop the default man paths,
> apparently.
>
> [...time passes...]
>
> Hmm.  Interesting enough, the current /etc/man.conf already contains
> /usr/ssl/man.  How long is it doing that already?  If I had known that,
> I'd removed the /etc/profile.d/openssl.* files long ago :|

I'm not sure exactly but a quick look in the Cygwin email archives shows
a reference from 2005 with it.  We were very forward-thinking back then. ;-)

--
Larry

_____________________________________________________________________

A: Yes.
> Q: Are you sure?
>> A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation.
>>> Q: Why is top posting annoying in email?

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