.\" $Id$
.\"
.\" Copyright (c) 2015 Ingo Schwarze <schwarze@openbsd.org>
.\"
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.Dd $Mdocdate$
.Dt MAN.CONF 5
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm man.conf
.Nd configuration file for man
.Sh DESCRIPTION
This is the configuration file
for the
.Xr man 1 ,
.Xr apropos 1 ,
and
.Xr makewhatis 8
utilities.
Its presence, and all directives, are optional.
.Pp
This file is an ASCII text file.
Leading whitespace on lines, lines starting with
.Sq # ,
and blank lines are ignored.
Words are separated by whitespace.
The first word on each line is the name of a configuration directive.
.Pp
The following directives are supported:
.Bl -tag -width Ds
.It Ic manpath Ar path
Override the default search
.Ar path
for
.Xr man 1 ,
.Xr apropos 1 ,
and
.Xr makewhatis 8 .
It can be used multiple times to specify multiple paths,
with the order determining the manual page search order.
.Pp
Each path is a tree containing subdirectories
whose names consist of the strings
.Sq man
and/or
.Sq cat
followed by the names of sections, usually single digits.
The former are supposed to contain unformatted manual pages in
.Xr mdoc 7
and/or
.Xr man 7
format; file names should end with the name of the section
preceded by a dot.
The latter should contain preformatted manual pages;
file names should end with
.Ql .0 .
.Pp
Creating a
.Xr mandoc.db 5
database with
.Xr makewhatis 8
in each directory configured with
.Ic manpath
is recommended and necessary for
.Xr apropos 1
to work, but not strictly required for
.Xr man 1 .
.It Ic _whatdb Ar path Ns Cm /whatis.db
This directive provides the same functionality as
.Ic manpath ,
but using a historic and misleading syntax.
It is kept for backward compatibility for now,
but will eventually be removed.
.El
.Sh FILES
.Pa /etc/man.conf
.Sh EXAMPLES
The following configuration file reproduces the defaults:
installing it is equivalent to not having a
.Nm
file at all.
.Bd -literal -offset indent
manpath /usr/share/man
manpath /usr/X11R6/man
manpath /usr/local/man
.Ed
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr apropos 1 ,
.Xr man 1 ,
.Xr makewhatis 8
.Sh HISTORY
A relatively complicated
.Nm
file format first appeared in
.Bx 4.3 Reno .
For
.Ox 5.8 ,
it was redesigned from scratch, aiming for simplicity.
.Sh AUTHORS
.An Ingo Schwarze Aq Mt schwarze@openbsd.org
