Re: Cygwin needs a man-db port

[waterlan <waterlan@xs4all.nl>]

waterlan schreef op 2014-04-25 00:10:
> waterlan schreef op 2014-04-24 21:43:
>> Chris J. Breisch schreef op 2014-04-17 20:32:
>>> Erwin Waterlander wrote:
>>>> Hi,
>>>> 
>>>> The major linux distributions have switched for their man system to
>>>> 'man-db' (http://man-db.nongnu.org/) in favour of the classic man.
>>>> 
>>>> I think that Cygwin should also switch to man-db. man-db is much 
>>>> better
>>>> in handling man pages in different encoding.
>>>> 
>>>> Before man-db, libpipeline (http://libpipeline.nongnu.org/) needs to 
>>>> be
>>>> ported, because man-db uses it.
>>>> 
>>>> I have tried to port man-db to Cygwin, but I did not succeed. I got
>>>> stuck in libpipeline. Did anyone else succeed?
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> Yes. And I agree this is a good idea.
>>> 
>>> Dependencies: gdbm, libpipeline
>>> 
>>> Build dependencies: pkgconfig, check, and the typical build stuff
>>> (make, gcc, etc.)
>>> 
>>> As I indicated earlier, I believe the current version of check is not
>>> working properly.
>>> 
>>> Check-0.9.12 seems to work out-of-the-box. Configure with 
>>> --prefix=/usr.
>>> 
>>> "make check" on check reports all tests passed, despite what appear 
>>> to
>>> be some failures. The CHANGELOG says that this version should pass 
>>> all
>>> tests on Cygwin. I've just subscribed to the mailing list and will
>>> check on whether these failures can be ignored or not. Still, it
>>> definitely appears to work better than the version we have now, which
>>> only passes 1 test in the test suite.
>>> 
>>> Libpipeline-1.3.0 seems to work out-of-the-box. Configure with 
>>> --prefix=/usr.
>>> 
>>> Oddly a "make check" for libpipeline-1.3.0 doesn't appear to actually
>>> do anything. This was not the case for earlier versions of
>>> libpipeline. Well, that's one way of getting rid of the test 
>>> failures,
>>> I guess.
>>> 
>>> Man-db-2.6.7 appears to work out-of-the-box.
>>> 
>>> Configuring man-db is a little harder than the other two.
>>> 
>>> ../man-db-2.6.7/configure --prefix=/usr --disable-setuid
>>> --docdir=/usr/share/doc/man-db
>> 
>> When I run that I get this error:
>> 
>> checking for db1/db.h... no
>> checking ndbm.h usability... no
>> checking ndbm.h presence... no
>> checking for ndbm.h... no
>> configure: error: Fatal: no supported database library/header found
>> 
> 
> I needed to install gdbm-devel and then I could install man-db.
> 
>> 
>> 
>>> If you don't add the --disable-setuid, you'll need to add a "man" 
>>> user
>>> to your system. If you're not using Corinna's snapshots, you'll need
>>> to add the user to /etc/passwd as well.
>>> 
>>> I'm not sure about the --docdir switch. That seemed to be consistent
>>> with Cygwin, but an actual package maintainer would be a better 
>>> source
>>> of info on this.
>>> 
>>> A couple of warnings are generated:
>>> 
>>> *** Warning: This system can not link to static lib archive
>>> /usr/lib/libpipeline.la.
>>> *** I have the capability to make that library automatically link in 
>>> when
>>> *** you link to this library.  But I can only do this if you have a
>>> *** shared version of the library, which you do not appear to have.
>>> 
>>> and a similar one for libman.la.
> 
> I had the same warnings.
> 
>>> I do have shared versions of these libraries, so I'm not sure why the
>>> warnings appear. I seem to recall a thread about something similar
>>> recently in the Cygwin mailing lists. I may go back and check.
>>> 
>>> Once installed, you'll want to do a 'mandb -c' to create the 
>>> database.
>>> It will report numerous warnings which can generally be ignored. See
>>> the manpage on mandb. This takes a while.
> 
> I got a couple of warnings. Not very much.
> 
>>> When new packages are added or updated on your system, you should run
>>> 'mandb -c' again. This seems like something that should be part of
>>> postinstall.

Hi,

A 'mandb -c' takes quite a long time. That can be pretty annoying during 
an install. Perhaps it is not needed. If you don't do it the cache will 
fill as you use man-db (I guess). You don't need all man pages in a 
cache.

> 
> I did not do that.
> 
> As far as I could see man-db worked very well. It displayed UTF-8,
> Latin-1, and KOI8-R encoded man pages correctly.
> 
> I only tried 32 bit. I used
> check 0.9.12
> libpipeline 1.3.0
> man-db 2.6.7.1
> 
> best regards,
> 
> 
>>> My 32-bit Cygwin install has a lot of gzipped files and the
>>> uncompressed versions under /usr/share/man. mandb didn't like that at
>>> all. That is probably something I did and not a Cygwin problem.
>>> 
>>> Note that I've done only the most minimal of testing. make check
>>> passes for man-db and I've opened a few man pages. They seem to work.
>>> 
>>> Obviously, someone with decision making power should decide if this 
>>> is
>>> something we want to add to Cygwin. My vote is yes, but that's just
>>> one vote. Or maybe even zero. I'm not sure I get a vote. :)
>>> 
>>> Also obviously, if the decision is to go forward, these three items
>>> need to be packaged up appropriately and a package maintainer
>>> assigned. Check is already a Cygwin package, but needs updating.
>>> 
>>> Somehow I have a feeling about who will be nominated for this task.

We can share the burden. I'm willing to package libpipeline. This 
package can be installed without harming anything. I will propose it in 
the cygwin-apps list. I think the latest libpipeline version is already 
good enough, even when some tests are failing, because we have seen 
man-db working with it. In the cygwin-apps list it should also be 
discussed how to further integrate man-db.

regards,

Erwin

>>> What minimal testing I have done has been on both 32-bit and 64-bit
>>> Cygwin 1.7.29.

-- 
Erwin Waterlander
http://waterlan.home.xs4all.nl/

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