On Sep 6, 2014, at 11:04 PM, Ingo Schwarze wrote: > > Manuals applying to multiple, but not all...architectures... > are faced will the ill choice of either > singling out one of their architectures or not specify[ing] any > architecture at all, in which case they look like [they apply] to > any architecture. > In our tree, some manuals choose one way, some the other. Got it.
> I fear that at some point, i will have to think about an extension > of the mdoc(7) language to solve that problem, to let a manual > specify more than one architecture it applies to. But i'm still > postponing that, i don't consider the time ripe just yet. > That sounds like a non-trivial undertaking. Good luck whenever that time comes, and thanks for owning it. It is difficult enough to make one system cohesive on one platform. Documenting the "same" system on many platforms is as you say like a can of worms. > That said, you also found a bug in makewhatis(8). > I just fixed that by the commit appended below. > Thanks for the report. My pleasure! > > I cannot easily re-run makewhatis(8) on the OpenBSD webserver, > but i checked that the fix works by applying it here: > > http://mdocml.bsd.lv/cgi-bin/man.cgi > > That's now closer to your expectation, right? > > Yours, > Ingo Yes! I tested with several commands and found the behavior to be consistent for all currently supported architectures. There are entries in the dropdown for platforms which are no longer supported and those produce errors, and I assume that is expected. I am almost clear on this topic. My original question led to good answers which have led to some loose ends in my understanding. I'll ask a final question by using an example: - Suppose a hypothetical command which is one binary that lives in /sbin and is distributed in base.tgz has a corresponding man page in section 8. - Suppose mandoc for the page does not specify an architecture, but the corresponding command appears in exactly 3 architectures. Are all of the following statements true?: 1. man.cgi (any version) would return a page for EVERY architecture. 2. man -S <any architecture> <command> would return a page for EVERY architecture 3. In http://openbsd.cs.toronto.edu/cgi-bin/cvsweb/src/distrib/sets/lists/man/ md.<arch> for EVERY arch will contain the man page. 4. In http://openbsd.cs.toronto.edu/cgi-bin/cvsweb/src/distrib/sets/lists/base/ md.<arch> for ONLY THE 3 ARCH will contain the command. (I would use a real world example, but I am not familiar enough with differences in archs - thus the importance of the question to me. Also if I did have some real examples I'd simply check the above statements myself..) > From Jason McIntyre: > generally you'll have all the man pages on an install, for all archs. > > if you're on i386 and you type "man pdisk", it'll tell you there's no > such page. if you're on macppc and you want to know if i386 has (or does > not have) the pdisk man page, you can try "man -S i386 pdisk". i think > this is what you're asking, but i'm not sure.
