Bart Blanquart wrote: >> >>> Will the transformation rules be hardcoded in the man.c >>> or will there be a system file which defines the transformation rules. >>> IOW - if sbin or exe is not included in the default transformation >>> rules, >>> could a system administrator extend those rules? >> >> Currently they are hard-coded because I don't expect that these rules >> will need frequent updates. However, I could see where ISV's may >> want to append on things like: >> >> /opt/VRTSvlic/bin /opt/VRTS/man >> >> If this route is taken, where should the config file go? Should it >> have a syntax that allows future man configuration or be a simple >> two-column file with comments allowed? > > The option to make the transformations configurable could be useful > for other os.o distributions that have a different layout (changing a > configuration file is easier to maintain than changing something in > the source tree) and, come to think of it, might this not be useful > for anyone delivering executables and manpages? If these > transformations are configured correctly it removes the need for users > to deal with MANPATH at all, though to keep things manageable some > kind of wildcarding would be useful: e.g. if there's > /opt/<something>/bin in the PATH, add /opt/<something>/man to the > corresponding MANPATH (except if a more specific, non-wildcarded rule > applies). > > Whatever syntax is chosen I would expect that it would get updated > automatically by packages/the packaging system, so something easily > updated programmatically (but, pending those packaging software to add > this information to their packages admins would need to maintain this > information so ideally it should be something readable too). > > Bart I'm not sure who you want to be able to change this file. In the past, this would be "root", but now it would be controlled by RBAC. Anyway, a normal user wouldn't be able to change this. (Yea, there could be a $HOME/.file to allow this, but that is *way* too much complexity.)
Also, don't forget how difficult for package creators to get "editable" files right. They always seem to trip over something unexpected added by another package. This is "rope" I would not suggest be used. A best practice would suggest not to do this. - jek3
