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Re: groff issue after upgrade to NetBSD-9.2



At Fri, 4 Mar 2022 17:26:23 +0000 (UTC), steve%prd.co.uk@localhost (Steve Blinkhorn) wrote:
Subject: Re: groff issue after upgrade to NetBSD-9.2
>
> Unpacking the textproc set overwrites files like
> /usr/share/groff_font/devps/DESC and devps/download, and maybe other
> files which have been adapted or expanded locally.  The unpacking
> process follows any symbolic link that devps has been set to rather
> than overwriting the symbolic link with a hard directory.  Fortunately
> I have backups.   Would this not be worth a warning in the installation
> guide - it's a similar issue  to /etc, where precious lolcalisations
> risk being lost?

Yeah, I would say most of those are not normally files that any end user
would be expected to localise.

I think the best you can hope for is, perhaps, in a future upgrade
if/when syspkgs are used, that there may someday be some conflict
detection for locally modified system files.

That said, you could also add any system files you've customised to
/etc/mtree/special.local and they'll be backed up, with complete daily
automatic version control, into /var/backups by /etc/security.  See
"check_changelist" in security.conf(5).


> I know thered is a move not to includee groff etc. in the main
> distribution, but some of us use it extensively: I have substantial
> software systems which emit *roff source files, it's not just a
> manpage generator.

Perhaps you would be a lot happier with a more modern troff?

I would suggest trying out pkgsrc/textproc/heirloom-doctools

Despite the name, these are quite modernised versions of the original
true AT&T Troff and related tools from what was effectively the
Documenter's Workbench.  These tools even have a special "groff"
compatability mode if indeed you depend on any Groff extensions.

See https://n-t-roff.github.io/heirloom/doctools.html

(There is also a port of old DWB-3 (3.3b) in pkgsrc/textproc/DWB, but it
has not been modernised nearly so much.)

One potentially huge advantage of using doctools over the base-system
groff would be that you can much more easily customise (and test!) the
tools and their configuration by applying local patches via pkgsrc.

That said I've long argued for these heirloom-doctools to be used to
replace the base system Groff, and I would still strongly suggest that
be done.

--
					Greg A. Woods <gwoods%acm.org@localhost>

Kelowna, BC     +1 250 762-7675           RoboHack <woods%robohack.ca@localhost>
Planix, Inc. <woods%planix.com@localhost>     Avoncote Farms <woods%avoncote.ca@localhost>

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