RFE: .pkg installer should set the MANPATH

[emix@…]

After the installation of MacPorts via the .pkg, the command "man port" returns "No manual entry for port". I think that the MANPATH should be set using the postflight script, adding this in ".profile" file:

export MANPATH=/opt/local/man:$MANPATH

[boeyms@…]

Adding some developers to the Cc: field so that some real people see this ticket. (Unfortunately necessary because, as documented at wiki:TracTicketing, the current setup does not automatically send emails to assignees, and in any case the macports-dev list doesn't seem to accept automatic emails from Trac.)

[jmpalacios (Juan Manuel Palacios)]

I wrote part of the postflight script so I should weigh in here. Totally agree that we should also enable the shell to find MacPorts manual pages.... but do note that I did not say "adapt MANPATH". Wasn't that deprecated in Panther time in favour of manpath(1)? What's the preferred method for enabling manual pages now? From what I remember, manpath(1) was supposed to find them automagically based on the value of the $PATH variable and the existance of corresponding <path_to_[s]bin_dirs>/../man dirs. Is this still so? If so, is it failing for us?

Would love to get fixed for 1.5, setting appropriate milestone.

-jmpp

[kballard (Lily Ballard)]

If you set MANPATH to be empty then manpath(1) will use the current PATH to find manpages. That's what I always do and it works for me.

Do we currently modify the PATH for the user? If so, we should probably set MANPATH to be empty (unless the user has already modified their MANPATH to contain custom dirs).

[emix@…]

I tried to install MacPorts on a fresh installation of Mac OS X and man pages are found correctly. Probably I had this problem on the older configuration because the MANPATH was already set by another software (maybe Fink?).

[jmpalacios (Juan Manuel Palacios)]

Both Tiger and Leopard should find man pages under our installation prefix just fine if the $PATH variable already contains the path to our binaries, which is something we already take care of in the base/portmgr/dmg/postflight script. The only platform in which we would probably have to do something is Panther, but, for one, we don't actively support that platform any longer and, last but not least, it's getting increasingly difficult coming by someone with a Panther box to do some testing.

Therefore I'm closing this ticket as invalid. If someone with a Panther box wants to suggest an enhancement to base/portmgr/dmg/postflight to easily find our man pages there, then I'd be happy to accept it provided it doesn't break anything for Leopard & Tiger.

-jmpp

[jmpalacios (Juan Manuel Palacios)]

We employed a different approach to this problem in the 1.6.0 release than what was discussed here, and as a result the postflight script in the release_1_6 branch​ has been revamped to tweak MANPATH under specific circumstances. Therefore this ticket can be considered fixed rather than invalid.

-jmpp