Re: bin/45980: Manual file indexing no longer supports compressed manual pages

[Abhinav Upadhyay <er.abhinav.upadhyay%gmail.com@localhost>]

The following reply was made to PR bin/45980; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: Abhinav Upadhyay <er.abhinav.upadhyay%gmail.com@localhost>
To: gnats-bugs%netbsd.org@localhost
Cc: gnats-admin%netbsd.org@localhost, netbsd-bugs%netbsd.org@localhost, 
tron%zhadum.org.uk@localhost
Subject: Re: bin/45980: Manual file indexing no longer supports compressed
 manual pages
Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2012 21:14:42 +0530

 On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 7:45 PM, Matthias Scheler 
<tron%zhadum.org.uk@localhost> wrot=
 e:
 > The following reply was made to PR bin/45980; it has been noted by GNATS.
 >
 > From: Matthias Scheler <tron%zhadum.org.uk@localhost>
 > To: Jukka Ruohonen <jruohonen%iki.fi@localhost>
 > Cc: gnats-bugs%NetBSD.org@localhost
 > Subject: Re: bin/45980: Manual file indexing no longer supports compresse=
 d
 > =A0manual pages
 > Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2012 14:10:03 +0000
 >
 > =A0On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 01:45:02PM +0000, Jukka Ruohonen wrote:
 > =A0> From: Jukka Ruohonen <jruohonen%iki.fi@localhost>
 > =A0> To: gnats-bugs%NetBSD.org@localhost
 > =A0> Cc: gnats-admin%NetBSD.org@localhost, netbsd-bugs%NetBSD.org@localhost, 
 > tron%zhadum.org@localhost.=
 uk
 > =A0> Subject: Re: bin/45980: Manual file indexing no longer supports comp=
 ressed manual pages
 > =A0> Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2012 15:41:17 +0200
 > =A0>
 > =A0> =A0On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 12:15:05PM +0000, Matthias Scheler wrote:
 > =A0> =A0> =A0The problem isn't related to compressed manual pages. The ne=
 w tool
 > =A0> =A0> =A0e.g. insists on having an ".Nd" section in each manual page.
 > =A0> =A0> =A0Without that section the file won't get indexed.
 > =A0> =A0>
 > =A0> =A0> =A0makewhatis(8) support this kind of manual pages without prob=
 lems.
 > =A0>
 > =A0> =A0Seems like a very trivial thing to fix, and certainly not somethi=
 ng to yearn
 > =A0> =A0for the old makewhatis(8) (and the associated incapable tools).
 >
 > =A0I've looked at "makemandb" and I have to disagree unfortunately.
 > =A0It is basically only designed to parse well structured manual pages.
 > =A0"makewhatis" had the same problem a long time ago and I fixed it
 > =A0in the course of two years by seriously enhancing the parser.
 > =A0Somebody would have to port all that code to "makemandb".
 
 Yes, but makewhatis(8) used to parse only the NAME section of the man
 pages. The new tools, parse almost the complete man page. The NAME
 section is the key here, if the name of the man page and its one line
 short description (.Nd) cannot be extracted from the man page then the
 rest of the data from that man page is useless because in the database
 we can't possibly identify which man page does this data belong to, so
 the tool simply reports an error for such pages. However, for rest of
 the sections, it tries to be as lenient as it can be (and in normal
 cases it should not report errors).
 
 However man(7) pages are a bit tricky to parse properly, it is
 possible that there might be some man pages out there with NAME
 section in a form that makemandb does not expect.
 
 --
 Abhinav