Re: [bjarniig@simnet.is: kernel-img.conf.5: warning from "lint"]

[Bjarni Ingi Gislason]

On Tue, May 05, 2026 at 07:23:01PM +0200, Ben Hutchings wrote:
> On Tue, 2026-05-05 at 02:01 +0000, Bjarni Ingi Gislason wrote:
> [...]
> >   Looking at the links/lintian part of the home page of the package
> > "linux-base" and seeing this:
> > 
> > tbl preprocessor failed, or it or soelim was not run; table(s) likely not 
> > rendered (TE macro called with TW register undefined)
> 
> Well, the same warning can be seen for groff's own man pages:
> 
> https://udd.debian.org/lintian/?email1=&email2=&email3=&packages=groff&ignpackages=&format=html&lt_error=on&lt_warning=on&lintian_tag=groff-message#all
> 
> (and in many other packages).  I think this is actually a bug in
> lintian.
> 
> [...]
> >   Reproduced with
> > 
> > groff -mandoc -ww -z kernel-img.conf.5:
> > 
> > an.tmac:kernel-img.conf.5.new:47: warning: tbl preprocessor failed, or it 
> > or soelim was not run; table(s) likely not rendered (TE macro called with 
> > TW register undefined)
> 
> But man does use tbl, and:
> 
>     man --warnings=w kernel-img.conf
> 
> shows no such warning.
> 
Hi,

  a first fix on your side is to add

'\" t

to be the first line in a man page that needs preprocessing with "tbl".

  See man(1), chapter "DEFAULTS".

  Using 'tbl' for every man page is a waste of resources (processor's
work, its time).