diff options
| -rw-r--r-- | NEWS | 744 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | README | 30 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | docs/INSTALL.quick | 20 |
3 files changed, 397 insertions, 397 deletions
@@ -6,22 +6,22 @@ Major changes since man-db 2.7.6.1: Fixes: ------ - o Fix locale macro loading for Chinese to load the macro file + * Fix locale macro loading for Chinese to load the macro file corresponding to just the language part of the user's locale. - o Honour --enable-cache-owner in generated systemd tmpfiles snippet + * Honour --enable-cache-owner in generated systemd tmpfiles snippet rather than hardcoding "man". - o If man adds prefixes to a page to handle such things as disabling + * If man adds prefixes to a page to handle such things as disabling hyphenation, then take account of those when looking for a preprocessor line at the start of the page. Improvements: ------------- - o Treat "\(en" as another synonym for "\-" in NAME sections. + * Treat "\(en" as another synonym for "\-" in NAME sections. - o Confine most subprocesses that handle untrusted data using + * Confine most subprocesses that handle untrusted data using seccomp. This mainly deals with subprocesses that perform encoding conversions, (de)compressors, groff programs, and a few other odds and ends. groff programs use a slightly more @@ -41,9 +41,9 @@ Major changes since man-db 2.7.6: Fixes: ------ - o Don't chmod CACHEDIR.TAG if it doesn't exist. + * Don't chmod CACHEDIR.TAG if it doesn't exist. - o Correct installation of Swedish manual pages. + * Correct installation of Swedish manual pages. man-db 2.7.6 (11 December 2016) =============================== @@ -53,17 +53,17 @@ Major changes since man-db 2.7.5: Fixes: ------ - o Fix build warnings with Perl 5.22. + * Fix build warnings with Perl 5.22. - o Document that 'man -K' searches page source, not rendered text. + * Document that 'man -K' searches page source, not rendered text. - o Fix a long-standing bug in man-db's internal cleanup stack + * Fix a long-standing bug in man-db's internal cleanup stack mechanism: if a cleanup function was pushed unexpectedly between a push/pop pair, then popping the stack would remove the wrong cleanup function and chaos could ensue. Avoid this by being more precise about which cleanup function should be popped. - o SECURITY: Eliminate dangerous setgid-root directories. In the + * SECURITY: Eliminate dangerous setgid-root directories. In the default configuration, cache files and directories are now owned by man:man rather than man:root; man and mandb are now setgid man as well as setuid man (except in the --disable-setuid case). This @@ -80,17 +80,17 @@ Major changes since man-db 2.7.5: http://www.halfdog.net/Security/2015/SetgidDirectoryPrivilegeEscalation/ - o Fix manual page translation infrastructure to render tables + * Fix manual page translation infrastructure to render tables correctly with po4a 0.47. Improvements: ------------- - o man now understands the <page>.<section> form on its command line, + * man now understands the <page>.<section> form on its command line, so for example 'man chmod.2' is now the same as 'man 2 chmod'. (Contributed by Mihail Konev.) - o The owner of cache files is now configured separately from whether + * The owner of cache files is now configured separately from whether man and mandb are installed setuid, using the --enable-cache-owner[=USER] option. @@ -102,11 +102,11 @@ Major changes since man-db 2.7.4: Fixes: ------ - o Adjust line number when inserting extra roff input. + * Adjust line number when inserting extra roff input. - o Disable roff input insertion with --recode. + * Disable roff input insertion with --recode. - o Build text manual with LC_ALL=C, to help reproducible builds. + * Build text manual with LC_ALL=C, to help reproducible builds. man-db 2.7.4 (8 October 2015) ============================= @@ -116,16 +116,16 @@ Major changes since man-db 2.7.3: Fixes: ------ - o Fix crash when eliminating manpath duplicates if canonicalising a + * Fix crash when eliminating manpath duplicates if canonicalising a manpath entry fails. - o Fix a build system bug that sometimes caused substitutions in + * Fix a build system bug that sometimes caused substitutions in manual pages to be left unexpanded. - o man exits with status 3 rather than 0 if its formatting command + * man exits with status 3 rather than 0 if its formatting command exits non-zero, even if its display command exits zero. - o man honours MANWIDTH in conjunction with the -Z option, to make it + * man honours MANWIDTH in conjunction with the -Z option, to make it easier to diagnose warnings in manual pages. man-db 2.7.3 (9 September 2015) @@ -136,21 +136,21 @@ Major changes since man-db 2.7.2: Fixes: ------ - o Tools that consider the terminal line length now try the + * Tools that consider the terminal line length now try the TIOCGWINSZ ioctl on /dev/tty as well as standard input/output. - o mandb does a better job of coping with index files having + * mandb does a better job of coping with index files having incorrect ownership. - o Squeeze blank lines internally rather than relying on the pager + * Squeeze blank lines internally rather than relying on the pager supporting the -s option. - o Fix use-after-free in ult_src. + * Fix use-after-free in ult_src. - o Fix crash when running from a missing and unreadable current + * Fix crash when running from a missing and unreadable current directory, such as an orphaned subdirectory of /proc. - o Restore the ability to use 'man -a' noninteractively. + * Restore the ability to use 'man -a' noninteractively. man-db 2.7.2 (16 August 2015) ============================= @@ -160,13 +160,13 @@ Major changes since man-db 2.7.1: Fixes: ------ - o 'man -k' and 'man -f' now pass any provided -l option through to + * 'man -k' and 'man -f' now pass any provided -l option through to the underlying apropos/whatis programs. - o apropos and whatis no longer truncate names if long output was + * apropos and whatis no longer truncate names if long output was requested. - o The database handle is no longer stored in a global variable, + * The database handle is no longer stored in a global variable, fixing a class of possible double-close bugs. man-db 2.7.1 (7 November 2014) @@ -177,13 +177,13 @@ Major changes since man-db 2.7.0.2: Fixes: ------ - o Various portability fixes for Solaris, contributed by Peter Bray. + * Various portability fixes for Solaris, contributed by Peter Bray. - o man now runs correctly when its current working directory has been + * man now runs correctly when its current working directory has been deleted. (As a result of this fix, man-db now requires libpipeline >= 1.4.0.) - o 'man -a' sends its prompts to /dev/tty rather than to stderr, and + * 'man -a' sends its prompts to /dev/tty rather than to stderr, and likewise reads replies from /dev/tty rather than from stdin. man-db 2.7.0.2 (28 September 2014) @@ -194,10 +194,10 @@ Major changes since man-db 2.7.0.1: Fixes: ------ - o Be more careful to avoid using or double-closing closed database + * Be more careful to avoid using or double-closing closed database handles. Fixes test suite failures on some systems. - o Patch the fdutimens function imported from Gnulib to work around a + * Patch the fdutimens function imported from Gnulib to work around a libc bug in GNU/Hurd. man-db 2.7.0.1 (24 September 2014) @@ -208,7 +208,7 @@ Major changes since man-db 2.7.0: Fixes: ------ - o Fix test suite in the case where the system supports + * Fix test suite in the case where the system supports high-precision timestamps but the file system containing the build directory does not. @@ -229,13 +229,13 @@ Major changes since man-db 2.6.7.1: Fixes: ------ - o lexgrog now filters terminal escape sequences out of cat pages + * lexgrog now filters terminal escape sequences out of cat pages before trying to parse them. - o Tools that consider the terminal line length now prioritise the + * Tools that consider the terminal line length now prioritise the COLUMNS environment variable above the TIOCGWINSZ ioctl. - o Manpath elements are no longer canonicalised before being inserted + * Manpath elements are no longer canonicalised before being inserted into the search path; this caused the use of incorrect catpaths in some cases. This was broken by the LANGUAGE-handling fixes in 2.5.4. @@ -243,10 +243,10 @@ Major changes since man-db 2.6.7.1: Improvements: ------------- - o Ship a systemd tmpfiles snippet to clean up old cat files after a + * Ship a systemd tmpfiles snippet to clean up old cat files after a week. - o The modification time of manual databases is now simply stored in + * The modification time of manual databases is now simply stored in the mtime of the database files themselves, rather than using a special row. This makes databases reproducible between otherwise-identical installations, as long as the underlying @@ -254,16 +254,16 @@ Major changes since man-db 2.6.7.1: high-precision timestamps to determine whether it needs to update databases. - o Timestamps of manual pages are also now stored in the database + * Timestamps of manual pages are also now stored in the database with high precision and compared accordingly. - o Files are now ordered by first physical extent before reading + * Files are now ordered by first physical extent before reading them, for substantial performance improvements in operations such as mandb and 'man -K'. - o 'man -H' shows a better error message if no browser is configured. + * 'man -H' shows a better error message if no browser is configured. - o zsoelim is now installed in $pkglibexecdir, to avoid clashes with + * zsoelim is now installed in $pkglibexecdir, to avoid clashes with other packages. man-db 2.6.7.1 (10 April 2014) @@ -274,7 +274,7 @@ Major changes since man-db 2.6.7: Fixes: ------ - o Remove test suite dependency on realpath(1). + * Remove test suite dependency on realpath(1). man-db 2.6.7 (10 April 2014) ============================ @@ -284,13 +284,13 @@ Major changes since man-db 2.6.6: Fixes: ------ - o Fix a test failure when configured with --enable-undoc. + * Fix a test failure when configured with --enable-undoc. - o Run the pager in man's original working directory rather than in + * Run the pager in man's original working directory rather than in the manual hierarchy. (As a result of this fix, man-db now requires libpipeline >= 1.3.0.) - o mandb only creates a cache directory tag if the catpath is + * mandb only creates a cache directory tag if the catpath is different from the manpath, since it should only be created in directories that consist entirely of cached information. @@ -305,24 +305,24 @@ Major changes since man-db 2.6.5: Fixes: ------ - o apropos's --and option now works again; it was broken by the + * apropos's --and option now works again; it was broken by the optimisations in 2.6.2. - o Restore compatibility with Automake 1.10. + * Restore compatibility with Automake 1.10. - o Improve support for translation of common elements of help + * Improve support for translation of common elements of help messages. - o Don't issue error messages when the database refers to a page that + * Don't issue error messages when the database refers to a page that no longer exists. - o Pass macro and hyphenation language tags to groff again (broken in + * Pass macro and hyphenation language tags to groff again (broken in 2.6.5). Improvements: ------------- - o ./configure --with-override-dir=OVERRIDE arranges to look for + * ./configure --with-override-dir=OVERRIDE arranges to look for manual pages in DIR/OVERRIDE before each path element DIR. man-db 2.6.5 (27 June 2013) @@ -333,10 +333,10 @@ Major changes since man-db 2.6.4: Fixes: ------ - o man's --warnings option works again on systems with versions of + * man's --warnings option works again on systems with versions of groff that support it (broken in 2.6.4). - o man automatically falls back to C.UTF-8 and then en_GB.UTF-8 if + * man automatically falls back to C.UTF-8 and then en_GB.UTF-8 if trying to find a UTF-8 locale on a system without /usr/share/i18n/SUPPORTED. @@ -348,12 +348,12 @@ Major changes since man-db 2.6.3: Fixes: ------ - o man(1) and catman(8) now document the default section list set at + * man(1) and catman(8) now document the default section list set at configure time. - o Build fixes for Automake 1.13. + * Build fixes for Automake 1.13. - o man-db 2.6.0 arranged to search the full manpath when expanding + * man-db 2.6.0 arranged to search the full manpath when expanding .so directives in manual pages (so that ".so name.1" works as well as ".so man1/name.1"), but this incorrectly did not take effect for manual pages that consist only of a .so directive. This is @@ -362,16 +362,16 @@ Major changes since man-db 2.6.3: Improvements: ------------- - o The MANLESS environment variable is now treated as if it were a + * The MANLESS environment variable is now treated as if it were a default value for the -r option to man: occurrences of the text "$MAN_PN" are expanded, and explicitly using the -r option overrides the default. - o The (unfortunately still hardcoded) maximum length for paths to + * The (unfortunately still hardcoded) maximum length for paths to manual page hierarchies in the configuration file is now 511 characters rather than 49. - o MANPATH entries now undergo glob(7)-style wildcard expansion, + * MANPATH entries now undergo glob(7)-style wildcard expansion, allowing entries such as "/opt/*/man". man-db 2.6.3 (17 September 2012) @@ -382,7 +382,7 @@ Major changes since man-db 2.6.2: Fixes: ------ - o Build fixes for glibc 2.16 and Automake 1.12. + * Build fixes for glibc 2.16 and Automake 1.12. man-db 2.6.2 (18 June 2012) =========================== @@ -392,18 +392,18 @@ Major changes since man-db 2.6.1: Fixes: ------ - o apropos prints an error message and returns non-zero when it finds + * apropos prints an error message and returns non-zero when it finds no matches. (Regression introduced in 2.5.1.) - o The presence of a 64-bit GDBM database on the manpath no longer + * The presence of a 64-bit GDBM database on the manpath no longer causes a 32-bit man process to exit with a fatal error. Improvements: ------------- - o apropos is much faster when run with many arguments. + * apropos is much faster when run with many arguments. - o whatis may be given the full path to an executable as an argument, + * whatis may be given the full path to an executable as an argument, in which case it will look up the base name of that executable in the appropriate parts of the manpath. @@ -415,28 +415,28 @@ Major changes since man-db 2.6.0.2: Fixes: ------ - o --with-db=db* and --with-db=ndbm compile again. + * --with-db=db* and --with-db=ndbm compile again. - o Translated manual pages are no longer displayed starting with a + * Translated manual pages are no longer displayed starting with a spurious blank line. - o straycats tries to ensure that col is invoked with LC_CTYPE set to + * straycats tries to ensure that col is invoked with LC_CTYPE set to a UTF-8 locale. - o Fix double-free in mandb when encountering a symlink outside the + * Fix double-free in mandb when encountering a symlink outside the manual hierarchy, thanks to Peter Schiffer. Improvements: ------------- - o mandb creates a cache directory tag, per + * mandb creates a cache directory tag, per http://www.brynosaurus.com/cachedir/ ("Cache Directory Tagging Standard"). - o Add support for Lzip-compressed manual pages, thanks to Matias A. + * Add support for Lzip-compressed manual pages, thanks to Matias A. Fonzo. - o Running 'man -w' (with a new --path alias) without a name now + * Running 'man -w' (with a new --path alias) without a name now prints the manpath, for compatibility with other man implementations. The vim viewdoc plugin makes use of this. @@ -448,9 +448,9 @@ Major changes since man-db 2.6.0.1: Fixes: ------ - o Fix a segfault when scanning links to empty pages. + * Fix a segfault when scanning links to empty pages. - o Once we've seen at least one record in a page's NAME section, + * Once we've seen at least one record in a page's NAME section, ignore any further records that don't include a whatis description, as they tend to be noise. @@ -462,10 +462,10 @@ Major changes since man-db 2.6.0: Fixes: ------ - o Ensure that the target of a symlink or .so chain is always recorded + * Ensure that the target of a symlink or .so chain is always recorded as a real page. - o Read a user-specified configuration file even if HOME is unset. + * Read a user-specified configuration file even if HOME is unset. man-db 2.6.0 (9 April 2011) =========================== @@ -475,64 +475,64 @@ Major changes since man-db 2.5.9: Fixes: ------ - o Fix build with versions of GNU ld that default to + * Fix build with versions of GNU ld that default to --no-copy-dt-needed-entries. - o Fix failure to display manual pages in some encodings when + * Fix failure to display manual pages in some encodings when installed setuid. - o Wrap long table cells in man(1), fixing test failures with groff + * Wrap long table cells in man(1), fixing test failures with groff 1.21. - o If an explicit section is passed to man, then pages that match + * If an explicit section is passed to man, then pages that match that section exactly will be preferred over pages that only have that section as a prefix. - o Fix a segfault when 'man -K' tries to display certain pages. + * Fix a segfault when 'man -K' tries to display certain pages. - o Fix a segfault in some situations when processes are killed by + * Fix a segfault in some situations when processes are killed by SIGHUP, SIGINT, or SIGTERM. Improvements: ------------- - o As promised in the release notes for man-db 2.5.8, man-db no + * As promised in the release notes for man-db 2.5.8, man-db no longer ships its own copy of libpipeline (http://libpipeline.nongnu.org/). You must build and install that library separately. - o Search the full manpath when expanding .so directives in manual + * Search the full manpath when expanding .so directives in manual pages. As part of this, '.so name.1' should now work as well as '.so man1/name.1'. - o lexgrog handles roff named glyphs and perldoc strings in NAME + * lexgrog handles roff named glyphs and perldoc strings in NAME sections. - o man no longer starts a pager if standard output is not a tty. + * man no longer starts a pager if standard output is not a tty. - o The -s option to whatis and apropos now takes a colon- or + * The -s option to whatis and apropos now takes a colon- or comma-separated list of sections, similar to 'man -S'. - o mandb error output is neater when stderr is not a terminal. + * mandb error output is neater when stderr is not a terminal. - o Add basic support for the implementation of nroff/troff in the + * Add basic support for the implementation of nroff/troff in the Heirloom Documentation Tools. Title lengths are not properly set as yet, and many features are untested. - o mandb removes cat* and NLS subdirectories of cat directories whose + * mandb removes cat* and NLS subdirectories of cat directories whose corresponding man directories no longer exist. - o mandb forces SIGPIPE back to its default disposition on startup, + * mandb forces SIGPIPE back to its default disposition on startup, to avoid noisy output in case it was started in a context where SIGPIPE was ignored. - o SECTION entries in a user configuration file now override those in + * SECTION entries in a user configuration file now override those in the system configuration file, rather than appending to them. - o The default less prompt now includes "(press h for help or q to + * The default less prompt now includes "(press h for help or q to quit)" to help novices find their way around. - o man-db may now be built to use Berkeley DB version 5 + * man-db may now be built to use Berkeley DB version 5 (--with-db=db5). man-db 2.5.9 (17 November 2010) @@ -543,10 +543,10 @@ Major changes since man-db 2.5.8: Fixes: ------ - o Fix test failures on some systems. A change made in 2.5.8 was + * Fix test failures on some systems. A change made in 2.5.8 was overly sensitive to directory ordering. - o Configuring with --disable-nls works again. + * Configuring with --disable-nls works again. man-db 2.5.8 (15 November 2010) =============================== @@ -556,11 +556,11 @@ Major changes since man-db 2.5.7: Fixes: ------ - o Fix assertion failure on 'man -l' with an uncompressed page and + * Fix assertion failure on 'man -l' with an uncompressed page and any of --no-hyphenation, --no-justification, or a non-English page. - o 2.5.7 introduced a regression when running catman in some locales, + * 2.5.7 introduced a regression when running catman in some locales, most notably in the C locale: while converting the output to UTF-8, iconv was run after the compressor rather than before it. This release fixes that. @@ -568,31 +568,31 @@ Major changes since man-db 2.5.7: Improvements: ------------- - o Add support for XZ-compressed manual pages, thanks to Darren Salt. + * Add support for XZ-compressed manual pages, thanks to Darren Salt. - o Try underscore-separated subpages as well as hyphen-separated + * Try underscore-separated subpages as well as hyphen-separated ones, thanks to Tanguy Ortolo. - o Build libman and libmandb as shared libraries, reducing installed + * Build libman and libmandb as shared libraries, reducing installed footprint by about 200K (at least on GNU/Linux). - o libintl is no longer shipped with man-db. If your system does not + * libintl is no longer shipped with man-db. If your system does not already have GNU libintl installed and you want man-db's messages to be translated, then please install GNU libintl separately (http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/). - o Warnings about unrecognised locales are now suppressed if the + * Warnings about unrecognised locales are now suppressed if the DPKG_RUNNING_VERSION environment variable is set (i.e. man-db is running within a Debian package's maintainer script), since the system locales are often out of sync with the C library in that context. Thanks to the Debian Perl maintainers for the idea. - o Allow building with an external libpipeline + * Allow building with an external libpipeline (http://libpipeline.nongnu.org/), which has been split out from man-db. This is a transitional measure: a future version of man-db will stop shipping its own copy of libpipeline. - o mandb should no longer repeatedly rescan manual page hierarchies + * mandb should no longer repeatedly rescan manual page hierarchies when a whatis entry turns into a broken link. man-db 2.5.7 (16 February 2010) @@ -603,49 +603,49 @@ Major changes since man-db 2.5.6: Fixes: ------ - o If a subprocess exits before man manages to read all the output + * If a subprocess exits before man manages to read all the output from it, it now drains the output file descriptor rather than immediately discarding it. - o If /usr/share/i18n/SUPPORTED is available, man attempts to use it + * If /usr/share/i18n/SUPPORTED is available, man attempts to use it to ensure that LC_CTYPE is set to an appropriate locale for the selected character set when invoking col. This fixes 'LANG=C man -E UTF-8', as used by lintian. - o Don't run tests if cross-compiling. + * Don't run tests if cross-compiling. - o Fix possible mandb crash when MAN_MUST_CREATE is unset. + * Fix possible mandb crash when MAN_MUST_CREATE is unset. Improvements: ------------- - o man can now tell nroff to disable justification if the + * man can now tell nroff to disable justification if the --no-justification option is used. - o If the full path to an executable is given as an argument, man + * If the full path to an executable is given as an argument, man will try looking up the corresponding manual page in the appropriate part of the manpath, rather than just trying to format the text of the executable as a manual page. - o In the GNU manual hierarchy layout, search man<sec><ext> + * In the GNU manual hierarchy layout, search man<sec><ext> directories as well as just man<sec> (e.g. /usr/share/man/man3p as well as /usr/share/man/man3). - o By request, man now prefers getting a page from the best manual + * By request, man now prefers getting a page from the best manual section over getting a page in the correct language. - o All programs now support a MAN_DEBUG environment variable which + * All programs now support a MAN_DEBUG environment variable which can be used in place of the -d/--debug option. This is useful in some situations where a program is being called deep in a process tree. - o man-db now builds with heirloom-doctools, thanks to Diego Pettenò + * man-db now builds with heirloom-doctools, thanks to Diego Pettenò of Gentoo. - o Add support for emulating pipe() with socketpair(), which is + * Add support for emulating pipe() with socketpair(), which is faster on some systems; thanks to Werner Fink of SUSE. - o Cat pages are now always saved in UTF-8, and converted to the + * Cat pages are now always saved in UTF-8, and converted to the proper encoding at display time, which means that cat pages can now be saved regardless of locale. Note that a consequence of this is that cat pages now include formatting information (e.g. @@ -659,44 +659,44 @@ Major changes since man-db 2.5.5: Fixes: ------ - o Exact-section database lookups were incorrectly returning all + * Exact-section database lookups were incorrectly returning all database entries whose section names were prefixes of the requested section name. In some cases this could confuse mandb into never believing that the database was up to date. - o Fix handling of pages with comma-separated names ("foo, bar, + * Fix handling of pages with comma-separated names ("foo, bar, baz") in their NAME sections, broken by a change in 2.5.0 (!) to ignore manual page names containing spaces. - o Fixed a buffer overflow in the pipeline library's line-reading + * Fixed a buffer overflow in the pipeline library's line-reading functions. I don't believe this to be exploitable: at worst we might believe that there's some garbage at the end of manual pages (whose contents are untrusted anyway) and this bug typically resulted in a failed assertion the next time anything tried to read a line. - o Plugged two substantial memory leaks in the pipeline library. + * Plugged two substantial memory leaks in the pipeline library. - o whatis and apropos only display any given manual page, or pointers + * whatis and apropos only display any given manual page, or pointers to it, once. - o man now sets less(1)'s environment up correctly for manual pages + * man now sets less(1)'s environment up correctly for manual pages encoded in CP1251. - o manconv no longer confuses situations such as "this UTF-8 + * manconv no longer confuses situations such as "this UTF-8 character is not representable in the target encoding" with "this text is not in UTF-8". Improvements: ------------- - o The default configuration file now includes section 0, used on + * The default configuration file now includes section 0, used on some systems to document C library header files. - o 'make check' now passes in the presence of a UTF-8-aware col, such + * 'make check' now passes in the presence of a UTF-8-aware col, such as that in util-linux-ng. - o The 'man -K' option is now supported to search the full text of + * The 'man -K' option is now supported to search the full text of all manual pages. This was inspired by a similar option in the other man package (currently at version 1.6f) currently maintained by Federico Lucifredi and formerly by Andries Brouwer, but I took @@ -706,11 +706,11 @@ Major changes since man-db 2.5.5: variously all manual pages or just one section, man-db's implementation ran between 3 and 10 times faster. - o Database directories are now only created when there are + * Database directories are now only created when there are corresponding manual page directories, not just because they're mentioned in the configuration file. - o By default, man will now try to interpret pairs of manual page + * By default, man will now try to interpret pairs of manual page names given on the command line as equivalent to a single manual page name containing a hyphen (e.g. 'man foo bar' => foo-bar(1)). This supports the common pattern of programs that implement a @@ -719,15 +719,15 @@ Major changes since man-db 2.5.5: invoke the subcommands themselves. Suggested by H. Peter Anvin, Federico Lucifredi, and others on the git mailing list. - o The build process is now quieter by default. Use './configure + * The build process is now quieter by default. Use './configure --disable-silent-rules' or 'make V=0' if you don't like this or your make(1) doesn't support the non-standard extension required. - o 'make install' now installs the manual. + * 'make install' now installs the manual. - o manconv understands a wider range of Emacs-style coding tags. + * manconv understands a wider range of Emacs-style coding tags. - o Recommendations to change MAN_DB_CREATES, MAN_DB_UPDATES, and + * Recommendations to change MAN_DB_CREATES, MAN_DB_UPDATES, and MAN_CATS #define options in manconfig.h have been replaced by new configure options --enable-automatic-create, --disable-automatic-update, and --disable-cats respectively. Note @@ -743,17 +743,17 @@ Major changes since man-db 2.5.4: Fixes: ------ - o Pages that declare a non-default encoding in their preprocessor + * Pages that declare a non-default encoding in their preprocessor lines are now handled correctly. - o Fix an uninitialised variable when sorting manual page candidates + * Fix an uninitialised variable when sorting manual page candidates that could lead to excessive memory allocation and possible crashes. Improvements: ------------- - o man-db's 'make check' now tests that all its own manual pages + * man-db's 'make check' now tests that all its own manual pages format without errors or warnings from groff, to ensure a better-quality release. @@ -765,21 +765,21 @@ Major changes since man-db 2.5.3: Fixes: ------ - o Build fixes for systems without GNU Make, and for systems without + * Build fixes for systems without GNU Make, and for systems without gettext; this successfully covers at least FreeBSD. - o The distclean target now works if po4a isn't installed. + * The distclean target now works if po4a isn't installed. - o Exit as soon as possible if database writes return ENOSPC. + * Exit as soon as possible if database writes return ENOSPC. - o lexgrog now stops on any unrecognised roff request, rather than + * lexgrog now stops on any unrecognised roff request, rather than continuing and often littering the database with garbage. - o man no longer requires both standard input and standard output to + * man no longer requires both standard input and standard output to be terminals in order to use the terminal line length. The line length from standard output is preferred if available. - o The manpath was built completely wrongly when multiple entries + * The manpath was built completely wrongly when multiple entries were present in LANGUAGE: duplicates were handled strangely, and languages were effectively iterated in reverse order. It should be rather more sensible now. @@ -787,40 +787,40 @@ Major changes since man-db 2.5.3: Improvements: ------------- - o The MAN_KEEP_STDERR environment variable can now be used to + * The MAN_KEEP_STDERR environment variable can now be used to override man's default of discarding stderr when stdout is a terminal. - o Handling of terminal widths for cat pages is now configurable, + * Handling of terminal widths for cat pages is now configurable, using the MINCATWIDTH, MAXCATWIDTH, and CATWIDTH configuration file directives. - o 'man -a' now detects duplicate manual page candidates more + * 'man -a' now detects duplicate manual page candidates more reliably, and sorts them better. - o Belarusian, Estonian, Greek, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, + * Belarusian, Estonian, Greek, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Romanian, Slovenian, and Ukrainian pages are now supported. - o man can now search for pages using regular expressions (with + * man can now search for pages using regular expressions (with --regex) or shell wildcards (with --wildcard). By default this searches both page names and descriptions, like apropos, but if the --names-only option is used then it searches page names only, like whatis. - o man can now tell nroff to disable hyphenation if the + * man can now tell nroff to disable hyphenation if the --no-hyphenation option is used. - o man-db already searched for manual pages in ../man and man + * man-db already searched for manual pages in ../man and man directories relative to each $PATH component; it now searches in ../share/man and share/man directories too. - o Groff 1.20 was recently released, including the 'preconv' + * Groff 1.20 was recently released, including the 'preconv' preprocessor. Although man-db has supported preconv to some extent since 2.4.4, man-db's configure now detects its presence and infers that groff supports Unicode input using it; man also now takes slightly better advantage of preconv than before. - o Per-locale groff macros are now loaded if possible, allowing us to + * Per-locale groff macros are now loaded if possible, allowing us to take advantage of such things as localised versions of predefined strings and language-aware hyphenation. This only works with Groff 1.20.2 or better (not yet released), since earlier versions did @@ -835,37 +835,37 @@ Major changes since man-db 2.5.2: Fixes: ------ - o Cleaned up a number of possible crashes, memory leaks, and missing + * Cleaned up a number of possible crashes, memory leaks, and missing error checks found by the Coverity Scan project. - o Fix build if MAN_CATS is undefined. + * Fix build if MAN_CATS is undefined. - o If the LINGUAS environment variable is set while running + * If the LINGUAS environment variable is set while running configure, it now controls building and installation of localised manual pages as well as program translations. - o The LANGUAGE environment variable is now tokenised properly, + * The LANGUAGE environment variable is now tokenised properly, rather than only taking the first two characters of each element. - o Fix build if --disable-nls is used or iconv is not available. + * Fix build if --disable-nls is used or iconv is not available. - o man now correctly propagates the exit code of whatis or apropos + * man now correctly propagates the exit code of whatis or apropos when called with the -f or -k option respectively. Improvements: ------------- - o A number of inconsistencies and readability problems with man-db's + * A number of inconsistencies and readability problems with man-db's own manual pages have been cleaned up, thanks mainly to Yuri Kozlov. - o Reduce the number of warnings emitted when using an unrecognised + * Reduce the number of warnings emitted when using an unrecognised locale. - o manconv and zsoelim are now called internally rather than by + * manconv and zsoelim are now called internally rather than by executing external programs, to improve performance. - o man-db now uses GDBM (--with-db=gdbm) in preference to Berkeley DB + * man-db now uses GDBM (--with-db=gdbm) in preference to Berkeley DB (--with-db=db or --with-db=dbN where N is 1, 2, 3, or 4) by default, since hardware improvements have rendered Berkeley DB's speed advantages negligible for our purposes and the relatively @@ -874,17 +874,17 @@ Major changes since man-db 2.5.2: then they will need to arrange for databases to be rebuilt on upgrade to this version. - o Manual pages may now be compressed with LZMA (although this is + * Manual pages may now be compressed with LZMA (although this is probably only worth it for very large pages). - o Duplicate manual page hierarchies due to symlinks (e.g. /usr/man + * Duplicate manual page hierarchies due to symlinks (e.g. /usr/man -> /usr/share/man) are detected and removed from the search order. - o A locale modifier (e.g. @latin) in a directory name must now match + * A locale modifier (e.g. @latin) in a directory name must now match the locale if the former is set, in addition to the language and territory. - o Bare .so includes (e.g. ".so foo.1" rather than ".so man1/foo.1") + * Bare .so includes (e.g. ".so foo.1" rather than ".so man1/foo.1") now work, although only within the same manual page hierarchy for now. @@ -896,29 +896,29 @@ Major changes since man-db 2.5.1: Fixes: ------ - o 'man -H' (without a browser argument) was completely broken in + * 'man -H' (without a browser argument) was completely broken in 2.5.1 and is now fixed. - o man no longer breaks in Japanese locales when using less as a + * man no longer breaks in Japanese locales when using less as a pager. Improvements: ------------- - o The --encoding option to man can now take a true character + * The --encoding option to man can now take a true character encoding rather than a *roff device; the latter was an unreliable, inflexible, and awkward way to select an output encoding. The old semantics are still supported for backward compatibility. - o Whatis parsing stops at .ie or .if conditionals. + * Whatis parsing stops at .ie or .if conditionals. - o CJK locale specifications where the codeset component is + * CJK locale specifications where the codeset component is equivalent to but not stringwise-identical to UTF-8 (e.g. zh_CN.utf8) are handled better. - o man(1)'s OPTIONS section is ordered more comprehensibly. + * man(1)'s OPTIONS section is ordered more comprehensibly. - o apropos, lexgrog, man, mandb, and whatis ignore encoding + * apropos, lexgrog, man, mandb, and whatis ignore encoding conversion errors for the last possible encoding of the source page. This helps, for example, with pages including misencoded non-ASCII names of authors; it usually seems better to allow these @@ -932,67 +932,67 @@ Major changes since man-db 2.5.0: Fixes: ------ - o The manual is now built automatically, avoiding some ordering + * The manual is now built automatically, avoiding some ordering problems on 'make distclean'. - o Manual pages are converted to the proper input encoding for troff + * Manual pages are converted to the proper input encoding for troff output as well as nroff output. - o The -t, -T, -X, and -Z options to man work again; in 2.5.0, they + * The -t, -T, -X, and -Z options to man work again; in 2.5.0, they read input from stdin rather than from the manual page. - o apropos and whatis no longer segfault when given an explicit + * apropos and whatis no longer segfault when given an explicit locale using -L. - o man now understands that groff's ascii device takes ASCII input, + * man now understands that groff's ascii device takes ASCII input, not ISO-8859-1. - o man no longer discards stderr when writing to a file or a pipe; + * man no longer discards stderr when writing to a file or a pipe; this was broken by an overenthusiastic change in 2.5.0. - o manconv now falls back to the next encoding in its list if any + * manconv now falls back to the next encoding in its list if any characters in an entire 64KB block fail to decode using the current encoding, as was originally intended. - o manconv is more careful about extracting coding: directives from + * manconv is more careful about extracting coding: directives from manual pages. - o Ctrl-C and Ctrl-\ now work again at the prompt issued by 'man -a'. + * Ctrl-C and Ctrl-\ now work again at the prompt issued by 'man -a'. Improvements: ------------- - o There is a new --with-sections configure option to change the + * There is a new --with-sections configure option to change the default value of SECTION in the configuration file. - o Automake is now used to generate Makefiles. Among other things, + * Automake is now used to generate Makefiles. Among other things, this fixes VPATH builds and some bugs in dependency generation, and should allow building with non-GNU versions of make. - o man-db now uses the Gnulib portability library, allowing the + * man-db now uses the Gnulib portability library, allowing the removal of earlier haphazard portability code. While this results in a somewhat larger source distribution, it makes man-db easier to maintain and should make it easier to build on systems to which the maintainer does not have access. - o In the process of switching to Gnulib, the last vestiges of + * In the process of switching to Gnulib, the last vestiges of pre-C89 support have been removed; they were documented to be broken anyway. - o If the MANROFFOPT environment variable is set, man now appends its + * If the MANROFFOPT environment variable is set, man now appends its value to the *roff command line. - o man now accepts a --recode option to output a source manual page + * man now accepts a --recode option to output a source manual page converted to a specified encoding. - o For compatibility with System V, man accepts -s as an alias for + * For compatibility with System V, man accepts -s as an alias for -S, and permits sections to be comma-separated as well as colon-separated. - o All programs, except the obsolete 'wrapper', now accept a --debug + * All programs, except the obsolete 'wrapper', now accept a --debug option. (accessdb, lexgrog, and zsoelim were lacking it.) - o man now accepts a --warnings option to enable groff warnings. + * man now accepts a --warnings option to enable groff warnings. man-db 2.5.0 (7 October 2007) ============================= @@ -1002,30 +1002,30 @@ Major changes since man-db 2.4.4: Fixes: ------ - o mandb --quiet now suppresses several more warnings. + * mandb --quiet now suppresses several more warnings. - o The output of apropos no longer includes duplicates when multiple + * The output of apropos no longer includes duplicates when multiple search terms are used. Improvements: ------------- - o Databases are now created for non-English manual hierarchies. All + * Databases are now created for non-English manual hierarchies. All database entries should be encoded in UTF-8; man-db converts from the character set of the manual hierarchy and to the character set specified in the user's locale as necessary. - o Per-locale directory handling has been improved. Directories such + * Per-locale directory handling has been improved. Directories such as "fr.UTF-8" may be used for occasions when it is appropriate to specify the character set but not the country, and so a full locale name is inconvenient. - o There is a new "manconv" program which can try multiple possible + * There is a new "manconv" program which can try multiple possible encodings for a file, thus allowing UTF-8 manual pages to be installed in any directory even without an explicit encoding declaration. - o A decompression library is now in place. This allows man-db to use + * A decompression library is now in place. This allows man-db to use zlib to decompress gzipped files, and allows most of its uses of temporary files to be removed. The only remaining exceptions are cat file creation (which uses a temporary file in the cat tree @@ -1033,41 +1033,41 @@ Major changes since man-db 2.4.4: temporary directory). Otherwise, man-db should now work fine even with a read-only /tmp during system recovery. - o Cat pages are now saved in the background while the pager is + * Cat pages are now saved in the background while the pager is active, so man will only need to block afterwards if the pager is exited very quickly. - o --with-* options are now available at configure time for most of + * --with-* options are now available at configure time for most of the auxiliary program locations that you might want to override. - o man now supports the MANPAGER environment variable, overriding + * man now supports the MANPAGER environment variable, overriding PAGER. - o apropos/whatis output is now truncated to the terminal width by + * apropos/whatis output is now truncated to the terminal width by default. As with man, this may be overridden using the MANWIDTH environment variable. - o lexgrog now ignores alleged manual page names containing spaces, + * lexgrog now ignores alleged manual page names containing spaces, as these usually indicate parsing errors or ill-formed NAME sections and they clutter up apropos output badly. I'm only aware of one legitimate counterexample, the Intercal compiler "oo, ick", which no longer appears to be known by that name anyway; let me know if there are any others. - o man now discards stderr from formatting subprocesses when + * man now discards stderr from formatting subprocesses when outputting to a pager, to avoid visual corruption from any error messages. - o If the MAN_KEEP_FORMATTING environment variable is set to any + * If the MAN_KEEP_FORMATTING environment variable is set to any non-empty value, then man will preserve formatting characters in its output even when standard output is not a terminal. This may be useful for programs such as pinfo that call man and can interpret its formatted output. - o Setting NOCACHE in the configuration file now prevents man from + * Setting NOCACHE in the configuration file now prevents man from ever creating cat pages automatically. - o apropos now accepts the --and option to display only items that + * apropos now accepts the --and option to display only items that match all the supplied keywords. man-db 2.4.4 (12 February 2007) @@ -1082,28 +1082,28 @@ Major changes since man-db 2.4.3: Fixes: ------ - o SECURITY: Fix a buffer overrun if using -H and the designated web + * SECURITY: Fix a buffer overrun if using -H and the designated web browser (argument to -H or $BROWSER) contains multiple %s expansions. This is CVE-2006-4250. - o Ignore SIGINT and SIGQUIT while running subprocesses, so that + * Ignore SIGINT and SIGQUIT while running subprocesses, so that typing Ctrl-C doesn't kill less (broken in 2.4.3). - o Similarly, ignore SIGPIPE in subprocesses. + * Similarly, ignore SIGPIPE in subprocesses. - o Various fixes to SIGCHLD handling in pipeline library, preventing + * Various fixes to SIGCHLD handling in pipeline library, preventing "waitpid failed: No child processes" errors. - o Skip "exec" in configuration file commands (perhaps left over from + * Skip "exec" in configuration file commands (perhaps left over from old installations), which the pipeline execution library cannot handle directly. Improvements: ------------- - o Add support for Chinese in the --enable-mb-groff case. + * Add support for Chinese in the --enable-mb-groff case. - o lexgrog now handles pages with multiple descriptions more + * lexgrog now handles pages with multiple descriptions more usefully, by displaying one description per output line. man-db 2.4.3 (3 July 2005) @@ -1114,42 +1114,42 @@ Major changes since man-db 2.4.2: Fixes: ------ - o Avoid problems creating databases on systems with badly broken + * Avoid problems creating databases on systems with badly broken clocks set before the Unix epoch. - o Fix detection of decompression programs, so that man doesn't + * Fix detection of decompression programs, so that man doesn't attempt to execute man pages when it doesn't have a corresponding decompression program. Improvements: ------------- - o apropos and whatis now accept a --section option to restrict their + * apropos and whatis now accept a --section option to restrict their search to a particular manual section. - o The pipeline execution library is now used for most calls to + * The pipeline execution library is now used for most calls to external programs, avoiding use of the shell. - o When stdout is not a terminal, man pages will be formatted in + * When stdout is not a terminal, man pages will be formatted in plain text without the use of backspace or ANSI formatting characters. - o When invoking apropos (man -k) or whatis (man -f) as external + * When invoking apropos (man -k) or whatis (man -f) as external programs, man now only passes through command-line options understood by the respective programs. - o Improve handling of locales with versions and/or modifiers. + * Improve handling of locales with versions and/or modifiers. - o Add support for Croatian, Galician, Indonesian, Slovak, and + * Add support for Croatian, Galician, Indonesian, Slovak, and Turkish pages. - o man-db may now be built to use Berkeley DB version 4 + * man-db may now be built to use Berkeley DB version 4 (--with-db=db4). Compatibility notes: -------------------- - o Setting the line length of manual pages now requires groff 1.18 or + * Setting the line length of manual pages now requires groff 1.18 or later. man-db 2.4.2 (20 September 2003) @@ -1160,25 +1160,25 @@ Major changes since man-db 2.4.1: Fixes: ------ - o SECURITY: Fix a number of buffer overruns in configuration file + * SECURITY: Fix a number of buffer overruns in configuration file handling, ultimate source location, and MANPATH processing. This is CVE CAN-2003-0620. - o SECURITY: Restrict the use of the DEFINE directive in ~/.manpath + * SECURITY: Restrict the use of the DEFINE directive in ~/.manpath to code running with dropped privilege. Previously, the 'compressor' variable could be used to run arbitrary code with raised privilege. This is CVE CAN-2003-0645. - o Make sure to initialize mandata structures to zero. The uses of + * Make sure to initialize mandata structures to zero. The uses of uninitialized memory resulting from this had been leading to random segfaults. - o Drop privileges in order to be able to read pages in + * Drop privileges in order to be able to read pages in non-world-readable user manpaths while setuid. - o man can be built with --disable-setuid again. + * man can be built with --disable-setuid again. - o man's locale support has been revamped. The encoding of source + * man's locale support has been revamped. The encoding of source manual pages is no longer related to the encoding of the input passed to *roff or to *roff's terminal output device. These frequently differ, especially in UTF-8 locales but in other @@ -1187,34 +1187,34 @@ Major changes since man-db 2.4.1: Debian multibyte patch applied, pass the --enable-mb-groff option to configure. - o When using GDBM, accessdb and apropos did not return database + * When using GDBM, accessdb and apropos did not return database entries in sorted order, since GDBM's key traversal interface is not lexicographically ordered. The database layer has been corrected to cope with this. - o Directories found in strange places in manual hierarchies don't + * Directories found in strange places in manual hierarchies don't crash mandb. Improvements: ------------- - o man now calls mandb to update databases rather than doing it + * man now calls mandb to update databases rather than doing it itself. This leaves cat pages as the sole remaining reason for man to be setuid. - o The "undocumented" message is only displayed if a corresponding + * The "undocumented" message is only displayed if a corresponding executable is found on the $PATH. - o All programs that read ~/.manpath now take a -C option to cause + * All programs that read ~/.manpath now take a -C option to cause them to read a different user configuration file instead. - o The --enable-debug option to configure has been removed. man-db's + * The --enable-debug option to configure has been removed. man-db's Makefiles now always calculate full dependencies for C files. - o mandb caches the contents of directories, significantly speeding + * mandb caches the contents of directories, significantly speeding up the purging of obsolete entries. - o mandb now knows how to purge database entries corresponding to + * mandb now knows how to purge database entries corresponding to removed stray cat pages. In addition, a pipeline execution library has been written, which @@ -1235,57 +1235,57 @@ Major changes since man-db 2.4.0: Fixes: ------ - o Don't enter an infinite loop when the SYSTEM environment variable + * Don't enter an infinite loop when the SYSTEM environment variable is set. - o man doesn't segfault when trying to follow a broken symlink. + * man doesn't segfault when trying to follow a broken symlink. - o mandb no longer corrupts databases when deleting entries that are + * mandb no longer corrupts databases when deleting entries that are part of multi keys. - o Prevent a possible buffer overflow when encountering large multi + * Prevent a possible buffer overflow when encountering large multi keys. - o Man page names are escaped when globbing, so [(1) can now be found + * Man page names are escaped when globbing, so [(1) can now be found even if the database is not up to date. - o Correct an access() check that led to 'man -X -l -' producing no + * Correct an access() check that led to 'man -X -l -' producing no output. - o lexgrog can now cope with man pages containing only a .so link. + * lexgrog can now cope with man pages containing only a .so link. - o Manual hierarchies with a specific encoding are put into the + * Manual hierarchies with a specific encoding are put into the search path in the correct order. A bug in $LANGUAGE handling had formerly meant that 'de' would take precedence over 'de_DE.UTF-8'. Improvements: ------------- - o man's behaviour when searching for page names that begin with a + * man's behaviour when searching for page names that begin with a digit has been made more intuitive, as has its treatment of section names that are extensions of ones mentioned in the configuration file but are not themselves explicitly named as sections. - o The default line length for pages formatted for terminal output + * The default line length for pages formatted for terminal output has been increased (reducing margin size) to match the default in groff 1.18. - o Proofread the manual. + * Proofread the manual. - o The -w flag to man has been changed to display the name of only + * The -w flag to man has been changed to display the name of only the source nroff file. A -W flag has been introduced which displays the name of the cat file as well. If both flags are given to man, it will behave as before. - o If bzip2 is installed, pages compressed with bzip2 can now be + * If bzip2 is installed, pages compressed with bzip2 can now be displayed. - o Add support for displaying an additional message when no man page + * Add support for displaying an additional message when no man page is found, which can be used to direct users to a generic "undocumented" page. - o The manual hierarchy layout will now be guessed where possible if + * The manual hierarchy layout will now be guessed where possible if an explicit --enable-mandirs argument is not passed to configure. man-db 2.4.0 (26 June 2002) @@ -1307,80 +1307,80 @@ Major changes since man_db-2.3.20: Fixes: ------ - o The GNU nroff test in configure now works when /bin/sh is ash. + * The GNU nroff test in configure now works when /bin/sh is ash. - o When scanning pages for NAME sections, lexgrog and mandb no longer + * When scanning pages for NAME sections, lexgrog and mandb no longer accidentally eat the line after each occurrence of the no-op request '.'. - o 'man --local' drops privileges throughout to avoid problems with + * 'man --local' drops privileges throughout to avoid problems with non-world-readable home directories. - o Newly created cat directories are chowned to the man user when + * Newly created cat directories are chowned to the man user when running as root. - o 'man --html' no longer creates its temporary file with raised + * 'man --html' no longer creates its temporary file with raised privileges, so that it now works with a setuid man. - o man detects preprocessors correctly when setuid. + * man detects preprocessors correctly when setuid. - o Various segfault fixes: explicitly null-terminate data returned by + * Various segfault fixes: explicitly null-terminate data returned by the Berkeley DB library to avoid some rare crashes; don't reuse a freed pointer in some cases of pages with multiple names; handle MANPATHs containing '::' more safely. - o Correctly parse manual pages using DOS line-ending conventions. + * Correctly parse manual pages using DOS line-ending conventions. - o Work around a misfeature in Berkeley DB: it pauses for several + * Work around a misfeature in Berkeley DB: it pauses for several seconds if asked to read a zero-length database, on the assumption that somebody is still writing the metadata page. man is generally better off just ignoring the database in this case. - o Work around corrupted databases in the case where the nextkey + * Work around corrupted databases in the case where the nextkey pointer chain contains a loop. Improvements: ------------- - o man looks in the filesystem followed by the database, rather than + * man looks in the filesystem followed by the database, rather than the other way round. Unix filesystems are quite good databases for this purpose, and the man database is only superior when looking up names that don't have associated links in the filesystem. - o 'apropos --wildcard --exact' makes sure wildcards match an entire + * 'apropos --wildcard --exact' makes sure wildcards match an entire description or page name, unlike 'apropos --wildcard' which may match on word boundaries too. - o man's page-searching code has been substantially rearranged, and + * man's page-searching code has been substantially rearranged, and now only starts displaying pages when it has finished searching for candidates. This allows pages to be sorted more sensibly. - o Manual pages are formatted in UTF-8 if that is the current + * Manual pages are formatted in UTF-8 if that is the current locale's character set. The -E option is now available to force a particular encoding. Note that some versions of (e.g.) less have problems displaying UTF-8 in conjunction with backspace characters; groff 1.18 should alleviate this by using ANSI colour escapes instead. - o The less prompt string sets -PM as well as -Pm. + * The less prompt string sets -PM as well as -Pm. - o Invoking man from within less now sets the correct page title in + * Invoking man from within less now sets the correct page title in the inner less. - o Unless the --match-case option is used, man will search for pages + * Unless the --match-case option is used, man will search for pages case-insensitively. - o Update the mechanism for setting the line length so that it also + * Update the mechanism for setting the line length so that it also works with groff 1.18. - o The -R switch is added to the less prompt string, which is needed + * The -R switch is added to the less prompt string, which is needed to display the ANSI colour escapes generated by groff 1.18 correctly. - o The $MANLESS environment variable may be used to override the + * The $MANLESS environment variable may be used to override the normal creation of the less prompt string. - o Translation updates for French, German, and Spanish, and a new + * Translation updates for French, German, and Spanish, and a new Catalan translation. See man/THANKS. man_db-2.3.20 (7 September 2001) @@ -1391,55 +1391,55 @@ Major changes since man_db-2.3.19: Fixes: ------ - o A typo in 2.3.19 caused character sets for many languages to be + * A typo in 2.3.19 caused character sets for many languages to be detected incorrectly. This especially affected multibyte languages. - o Long options in the environment variable LESS are handled + * Long options in the environment variable LESS are handled correctly. - o When checking if cat pages need to be updated, check for different + * When checking if cat pages need to be updated, check for different timestamps rather than whether the cat page is newer, as otherwise we were confused by tools like tar that preserve timestamps in their archives. Each cat page is now set to have the same mtime as its corresponding man page. - o Look up the correct character set each time a page is displayed + * Look up the correct character set each time a page is displayed rather than just the first time, in case pages in several different character sets are viewed in a single session. - o groff requests are no longer assumed to be case-insensitive when + * groff requests are no longer assumed to be case-insensitive when scanning for preprocessors, so for example mdoc's .Eq request isn't mistaken for the .EQ which introduces eqn commands. - o Escape arguments passed to the shell that might contain dangerous + * Escape arguments passed to the shell that might contain dangerous characters. - o Avoid an infinite loop if the LANGUAGE environment variable is set + * Avoid an infinite loop if the LANGUAGE environment variable is set but empty. - o The --create option to mandb now implies --no-purge. + * The --create option to mandb now implies --no-purge. - o Temporary files are handled with more secure permissions. + * Temporary files are handled with more secure permissions. Improvements: ------------- - o Use a variant of mkstemp() rather than tempnam(), to avoid classic + * Use a variant of mkstemp() rather than tempnam(), to avoid classic race conditions. (I don't believe the races were usefully exploitable.) - o Tolerate whatis entries in a database that point to themselves. + * Tolerate whatis entries in a database that point to themselves. - o Detect more translations of the NAME section. + * Detect more translations of the NAME section. - o Add examples of man pages written in POD and SGML. + * Add examples of man pages written in POD and SGML. - o lexgrog is now installed in /usr/bin by default, with proper + * lexgrog is now installed in /usr/bin by default, with proper argument parsing, an improved output format, and a man page. It is expected to be used by programs that need to validate man pages. - o The -H (--html) option to man is now compiled in by default, and + * The -H (--html) option to man is now compiled in by default, and supports the BROWSER specification (as documented at http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/BROWSER/ and amended at http://www.dwheeler.com/browse/secure_browser.html). @@ -1452,65 +1452,65 @@ Major changes since man_db-2.3.18: Fixes: ------ - o The user configuration file ~/.manpath is no longer trusted when + * The user configuration file ~/.manpath is no longer trusted when deciding whether to drop privileges. In the process, user cat directory handling has been improved. - o Commands of the form 'man -S "" foo' formerly emptied the list of + * Commands of the form 'man -S "" foo' formerly emptied the list of acceptable sections and then searched the database anyway, and commands of the form 'man -S ::: foo' segfaulted. Both now use the standard list of sections. - o The HUP and TERM signals are now handled better. + * The HUP and TERM signals are now handled better. - o straycats processing invokes 'col -bx' rather than 'col-bx'. + * straycats processing invokes 'col -bx' rather than 'col-bx'. - o The root user is now correctly allowed to update databases in + * The root user is now correctly allowed to update databases in system manpaths. - o apropos and whatis no longer enter infinite recursion if a + * apropos and whatis no longer enter infinite recursion if a database contains an entry pointing to itself. Improvements: ------------- - o When compiled with --enable-setuid, man and mandb can be installed + * When compiled with --enable-setuid, man and mandb can be installed non-setuid. In this mode, they will be unable to write cat pages in system directories or to modify system databases, but will otherwise operate correctly. This allows a single binary package to support setuid and non-setuid modes of operation. - o The ordering of manual sections is read from SECTION directives in + * The ordering of manual sections is read from SECTION directives in the configuration file rather than being hard-coded. - o The MANDB_MAP configuration file directive is documented more + * The MANDB_MAP configuration file directive is documented more clearly. - o Multiple whatis entries separated by commas, break requests, + * Multiple whatis entries separated by commas, break requests, and/or paragraph requests are handled more intelligently. - o Fill control requests (.nf and .fi) cause lexgrog to assume a + * Fill control requests (.nf and .fi) cause lexgrog to assume a break at each newline. - o Duplicate manpath entries (often generated in the course of + * Duplicate manpath entries (often generated in the course of national language support) are removed, so that 'man -a' works better. - o man_db's binaries are installed unstripped by default. + * man_db's binaries are installed unstripped by default. - o Since supporting certain layouts of manual page hierarchies causes + * Since supporting certain layouts of manual page hierarchies causes problems for others, the layout is now selectable via configure. The default is to try all layouts. - o man only does an on-the-fly update of the database caches when the + * man only does an on-the-fly update of the database caches when the --update option is given. - o Manual pages are displayed with a line length appropriate to the + * Manual pages are displayed with a line length appropriate to the current terminal. If a non-standard line length is used (i.e. the terminal is not between 66 and 80 characters wide) then cat pages will not be saved. - o mandb tries to purge obsolete entries from its databases. Using + * mandb tries to purge obsolete entries from its databases. Using the --create flag should now usually only be necessary in cases of database corruption. @@ -1534,73 +1534,73 @@ Major changes since man_db-2.3.11: Fixes: ------ - o Multiple security fixes, including better handling of temporary + * Multiple security fixes, including better handling of temporary files, a format string vulnerability fix, and more careful dropping of privileges when running setuid. [Fabrizio, Colin] - o Databases no longer disappear temporarily while they are being + * Databases no longer disappear temporarily while they are being regenerated. [Fabrizio] - o Corrected handling of locale environment variables. Setting + * Corrected handling of locale environment variables. Setting several colon-separated locales in $LANGUAGE also works now. [Colin] - o whatis and apropos are more careful about the possibility of a + * whatis and apropos are more careful about the possibility of a corrupted database. [Fabrizio, Colin] Improvements: ------------- - o If root has private manual hierarchies, cat pages generated from + * If root has private manual hierarchies, cat pages generated from them are no longer chowned to a less-privileged user. [Wilf] - o Rewrote configuration file handling, adding DEFINE directives to + * Rewrote configuration file handling, adding DEFINE directives to set paths to external programs. The configuration file is now called man_db.conf. [Wilf] - o Support FHS paths (/usr/share/man and /var/cache/man) in + * Support FHS paths (/usr/share/man and /var/cache/man) in preference to FSSTND paths (/usr/man and /var/catman). [Fabrizio] - o Converted from catgets to GNU gettext for national language + * Converted from catgets to GNU gettext for national language support. [Fabrizio, Colin] - o Several new and improved localized message catalogues and + * Several new and improved localized message catalogues and translated man pages. [Fabrizio, Colin, other contributors] - o Added accessdb utility, which displays the contents of a manual + * Added accessdb utility, which displays the contents of a manual page database. [Fabrizio] - o Added user configuration file ~/.manpath, with the same syntax as + * Added user configuration file ~/.manpath, with the same syntax as the global configuration file. [Fabrizio] - o Leading or trailing colons in the MANPATH environment variable + * Leading or trailing colons in the MANPATH environment variable cause the manpath derived from configuration files to be prepended or appended respectively. A double colon in the middle of the environment variable causes the configuration file manpath to be inserted between the colons. [Fabrizio] - o Added experimental -H and -Thtml options to take advantage of + * Added experimental -H and -Thtml options to take advantage of groff's new HTML driver. [Fabrizio] - o lexgrog now scans manual pages to guess which preprocessors are + * lexgrog now scans manual pages to guess which preprocessors are needed. [Fabrizio] - o Create cat directories on the fly if necessary. [Fabrizio] + * Create cat directories on the fly if necessary. [Fabrizio] - o Supply a wrapper which explicitly drops privileges to uid man if + * Supply a wrapper which explicitly drops privileges to uid man if man or mandb is run as root. In the future, splitting out setuid functions into a separate helper process may remove the need for this paranoia. [Fabrizio] - o Add --test option to mandb, which merely reports errors in manual + * Add --test option to mandb, which merely reports errors in manual page hierarchies rather than actually creating or updating a database. [Fabrizio, Colin] - o Manual pages may now be symlinks outside the mantree. This should + * Manual pages may now be symlinks outside the mantree. This should pose no significant security concerns, and utilities such as GNU stow create such symlinks. [Colin] - o Deprecate whatis references for man, and display a warning if + * Deprecate whatis references for man, and display a warning if displaying a page relies on going through a whatis reference. They often lead to confusingly non-obviously-deterministic behaviour, and guaranteeing that man will honour them even when the database @@ -1611,12 +1611,12 @@ man_db-2.3.11 (21 September 1995) Major changes since man_db-2.3.10: - o The man_db manual is bundled in source form. + * The man_db manual is bundled in source form. - o Components of $PATH not in the config file were checked for + * Components of $PATH not in the config file were checked for `man' subdirectories. Now they are also checked for `../man'. - o Untarring a new manual page (with a timestamp older than the + * Untarring a new manual page (with a timestamp older than the relative cat file) over the original did *not* cause man/catman to reformat the replacement. This is changed. As a side effect, untarring an unchanged man file over the original will also cause @@ -1630,23 +1630,23 @@ Major changes since man_db-2.3.5: Fixes: ------ - o Global databases were not owned by setuid owner (if applicable). + * Global databases were not owned by setuid owner (if applicable). As a consequence only mandb could update the databases unless man was run by superuser. Stupid bug. - o The keyword passed to apropos _never_ matched the first word + * The keyword passed to apropos _never_ matched the first word of any whatis line. - o FAVOUR_STRAYCATS code (if enabled), did not work properly. + * FAVOUR_STRAYCATS code (if enabled), did not work properly. - o zsoelim did not work as advertised. + * zsoelim did not work as advertised. Improvements: ------------- - o Man removes its temporary files upon abnormal termination. + * Man removes its temporary files upon abnormal termination. - o apropos does proper word matching rather than the fuzzy + * apropos does proper word matching rather than the fuzzy matching of 2.3.5. eg. supplying any of the keywords: `ld.so', `a.out', `dynamic', `linker' or `loader' will match the following entry: @@ -1655,22 +1655,22 @@ Major changes since man_db-2.3.5: whereas `a.out' and `loader' used to fail. - o man/whatis/apropos return with exit code 16 if manual + * man/whatis/apropos return with exit code 16 if manual page/file or keyword is not matched. Previously exit code 0 was used making it difficult for callers to know if the lookup was successful. - o addition of German message catalogue. + * addition of German message catalogue. - o `apropos' and `man -k' do POSIX specified regex matching rather + * `apropos' and `man -k' do POSIX specified regex matching rather than keyword searches if the environment variable POSIXLY_CORRECT is defined. - o added glob-only support of native system manual hierarchies + * added glob-only support of native system manual hierarchies on HP-UX, OSF and Solaris operating systems. Improved the whatis parsing code to cope with majority of HP-UX manual pages. - o ported to NeXTstep. + * ported to NeXTstep. man_db-2.3.5 (21 April 1995) ============================ @@ -1680,19 +1680,19 @@ Major changes since man_db-2.2.1: Added support for... -------------------- - o Non-standard section names i.e. multi-character + * Non-standard section names i.e. multi-character - o Compressed manual pages. + * Compressed manual pages. A new utility `zsoelim' is included to correctly handle nroff .so requests that point to a file which has been compressed. - o Compressed stray cats. + * Compressed stray cats. By definition, stray cats are not re-creatable as they have no relative source manual page. As they may have non-default compression extensions and may reside on read-only media, stray cats have the same compression support as manual pages. - o FSSTND proposed `extension' support. + * FSSTND proposed `extension' support. Specific package manual pages may be installed in the standard sections but with a package-unique extension appended as in exit(3tcl) - ../man/man3/exit.3tcl. Using the command @@ -1702,14 +1702,14 @@ Major changes since man_db-2.2.1: would then display an exit manual page with a tcl extension, if available. Of course, `man 3tcl exit' works as always. - o FSSTND proposed NLS man subdirectories. + * FSSTND proposed NLS man subdirectories. Of the form .../man/<locale>/man<sec>/ - o NLS message catalogue hooks. + * NLS message catalogue hooks. Provision has been made for the programs to emit their messages in a language dependent form. - o `whatis' referred manual pages. + * `whatis' referred manual pages. Some manual pages contain relevant information for commands or programs that would not otherwise reference the page. The `whatis' part of the manual page is used to create virtual @@ -1717,10 +1717,10 @@ Major changes since man_db-2.2.1: Examples include names such as `.' and `:' referencing the local shell manual page. - o Catman utility. + * Catman utility. Used to pre-format the manual pages into cat pages. - o Operating systems other than Linux. + * Operating systems other than Linux. man_db has been reported to compile on the following platforms: Linux, SunOS, Solaris, Ultrix, OSF, HP-UX, AIX, IRIX @@ -1728,77 +1728,77 @@ Major changes since man_db-2.2.1: (although portability does not extend to support of native manual tree structures on some of these systems, eg. HP-UX) - o Berkeley DB library routines. + * Berkeley DB library routines. This compliments the support of both gdbm and ndbm which already existed. DB databases may be shared across platforms. - o $MANOPTS environment variable. + * $MANOPTS environment variable. The environment variable MANOPTS may be set to any string in command line option/argument format. It is parsed by man(1) prior to its actual command line. - o Per manual hierarchy cat directory locations. + * Per manual hierarchy cat directory locations. It is possible to redirect your cat pages to other directories or even other file systems. - o Per manual hierarchy nroff/[tg]roff format scripts. + * Per manual hierarchy nroff/[tg]roff format scripts. Ability to create custom formatter scripts that are called by man(1) to enable format/display of non-standard manual pages or manual pages requiring a special macro package. - o Extension of `man -l'. + * Extension of `man -l'. Arguments following -l are interpreted as local files requiring format and display. Extensions are: `man -l -' formats and displays stdin. `man -l foo.1.gz' decompresses, formats and displays foo.1.gz. - o Latin1 manual pages/choice of nroff output device. + * Latin1 manual pages/choice of nroff output device. - o Viewing of ASCII manual pages formatted for a latin1 output device + * Viewing of ASCII manual pages formatted for a latin1 output device on a 7 bit ASCII terminal (-7). - o Whatis and apropos utilities support regex and wildcard matching. + * Whatis and apropos utilities support regex and wildcard matching. - o checkman. + * checkman. Shell script utility that will find and display duplicated manual pages found across manual page hierarchies. - o mkcatdirs. + * mkcatdirs. Shell script utility to create appropriate cat directories after installation and setup. Conceptual improvements ----------------------- - o Replacement of single database with multiple modular db's. + * Replacement of single database with multiple modular db's. Easier integration of additional information into the databases in the future. - o Both user and global databases share the same name: + * Both user and global databases share the same name: `index.<db-type>' where <db-type> could be `bt', `db' or `pag' and `dir'. - o Databases contain `whatis' text. + * Databases contain `whatis' text. Makewhatis and text whatis databases are redundant, although whatis and apropos will use the text whatis database for information if they cannot read from a relevant index database. - o straycats handled without need for `placeholders'. + * straycats handled without need for `placeholders'. - o Friendly less(1) prompt. + * Friendly less(1) prompt. If man(1) uses less(1) as its pager (dependent on both static and dynamic factors), the prompt is modified to suit the manual page being displayed. The modification performed is also changeable by the user. - o man_db manual. + * man_db manual. man_db has a manual that covers the setup, maintenance and use of a generic online manual page system. - o Modes of operation. + * Modes of operation. The man_db utilities can be compiled with various modes of operation in mind. Eg. man can be stopped from updating databases and/or creating cat files in situations where security is extremely @@ -1807,29 +1807,29 @@ Major changes since man_db-2.2.1: Speed improvements ------------------ - o Background compression/saving of cat files. + * Background compression/saving of cat files. Cat files are compressed and saved in the background, whilst the user is able to browse the formatted page directly. - o Merge of straycats and makewhatis into mandb. + * Merge of straycats and makewhatis into mandb. While mandb has slowed, it now incorporates makewhatis and straycats functionality and is much faster as a whole. 2.0a2 used grep/awk, 2.2 used C regex and 2.3 now uses lex sourced C to strip out the whatis information from the raw man or cat files. - o Berkeley DB support. + * Berkeley DB support. Provides lower database initialisation overhead as compared with gdbm. - o Extremely fast whatis(1) searches. + * Extremely fast whatis(1) searches. whatis(1) uses keyed database lookups to retrieve whatis strings for standard (non regex/wildcard) searches. Fixes ----- - o Correct handling of $MANSECT. + * Correct handling of $MANSECT. The environment variable MANSECT is no longer ignored. - o Acknowledgement of $MANPATH order. + * Acknowledgement of $MANPATH order. manpath elements are searched in the order specified. @@ -139,21 +139,21 @@ INSTALL Running configure. - o READ `docs/INSTALL.autoconf' regarding ./configure options + * READ `docs/INSTALL.autoconf' regarding ./configure options - o RUN `./configure --help' to see what --enable and --with + * RUN `./configure --help' to see what --enable and --with options may be useful. - o RUN `./configure' with the appropriate options and environment + * RUN `./configure' with the appropriate options and environment variable settings BROWSE or EDIT the following files that were created by the configuration process. - o `include/manconfig.h' regarding paths to support programs, + * `include/manconfig.h' regarding paths to support programs, the default section list and other specific definitions. - o `include/comp_src.h' if the default compressor support is + * `include/comp_src.h' if the default compressor support is inadequate for your requirements. (usually .Z [compress], .z, .gz [gzip]) @@ -167,40 +167,40 @@ NLS manual pages, support for which is compiled in by default. Running make. - o RUN `make' to compile man-db with the set of translations chosen + * RUN `make' to compile man-db with the set of translations chosen when running `./configure'. Sort out the man-db configuration file. - o RUN `./src/man -l man/man5/manpath.5' from the root of this + * RUN `./src/man -l man/man5/manpath.5' from the root of this distribution to read the man-db configuration file details. - o EDIT `./src/man_db.conf' to your local requirements. + * EDIT `./src/man_db.conf' to your local requirements. Install the package. - o (gain superuser privileges for the rest of the steps) + * (gain superuser privileges for the rest of the steps) - o RUN `make install' to install the utilities and manual pages. + * RUN `make install' to install the utilities and manual pages. Initialise the `index' databases for all manpaths marked as global in the man-db configuration file. - o RUN `mandb' (This step is equivalent to running straycats and + * RUN `mandb' (This step is equivalent to running straycats and makewhatis too). The following steps are optional / dependent on local conventions. - o ACKNOWLEDGE any warnings emitted by mandb. Bogus manual pages + * ACKNOWLEDGE any warnings emitted by mandb. Bogus manual pages are not included in the database and may be a waste of space. Those pages without correctly formatted `whatis' lines are included, but will have a whatis entry of "(unknown)" - o CD tools and RUN `mkcatdirs -t' to see if you have all of the + * CD tools and RUN `mkcatdirs -t' to see if you have all of the required cat directories. `mkcatdirs' without an option will display a usage message. - o CD tools and RUN `checkman' with an argument of colon separated + * CD tools and RUN `checkman' with an argument of colon separated manual page hierarchies to cross check for duplicated manual pages. If no argument is given, your default $MANPATH will be used. @@ -215,7 +215,7 @@ The following steps are optional / dependent on local conventions. At this point, running checkman again may yield further duplicates that were ignored the first time. - o RUN `catman' with appropriate options to create any/all cat files + * RUN `catman' with appropriate options to create any/all cat files that you would like pre-formatted. diff --git a/docs/INSTALL.quick b/docs/INSTALL.quick index 4170575e..c94abeb1 100644 --- a/docs/INSTALL.quick +++ b/docs/INSTALL.quick @@ -5,29 +5,29 @@ the Quick install below. man-db requires several external packages: - o libpipeline >= 1.5.0 (http://libpipeline.nongnu.org/) - o flex >= 2.5.30 (http://flex.sf.net/) - o a database library, one of: + * libpipeline >= 1.5.0 (http://libpipeline.nongnu.org/) + * flex >= 2.5.30 (http://flex.sf.net/) + * a database library, one of: GDBM (http://www.gnu.org.ua/software/gdbm/) Berkeley DB < 6 NDBM and on systems without GNU libc: - o libiconv >= 1.8 (http://www.gnu.org/software/libiconv/) + * libiconv >= 1.8 (http://www.gnu.org/software/libiconv/) Some other packages are recommended and used if available: - o zlib (http://zlib.net/) - o libseccomp (https://github.com/seccomp/libseccomp) + * zlib (http://zlib.net/) + * libseccomp (https://github.com/seccomp/libseccomp) Quick INSTALL ============= - o RUN `./configure <appropriate flags>' - o EDIT configuration files/headers if necessary - o RUN `make <appropriate variable definitions>' - o RUN `make install <appropriate variable definitions>' + * RUN `./configure <appropriate flags>' + * EDIT configuration files/headers if necessary + * RUN `make <appropriate variable definitions>' + * RUN `make install <appropriate variable definitions>' Note (1): If you don't know what <appropriate flags> or <appropriate variable definitions> mean, you should be reading/following the install |