DragonFly On-Line Manual Pages
MAKEWHATIS(8) DragonFly System Manager's Manual MAKEWHATIS(8)
NAME
makewhatis - index UNIX manuals
SYNOPSIS
makewhatis [-aDnpQ] [-T utf8] [-C file]
makewhatis [-aDnpQ] [-T utf8] dir ...
makewhatis [-DnpQ] [-T utf8] -d dir [file ...]
makewhatis [-Dnp] [-T utf8] -u dir [file ...]
makewhatis [-DQ] -t file ...
DESCRIPTION
The makewhatis utility extracts keywords from UNIX manuals and indexes
them in a database for fast retrieval by apropos(1), whatis(1), and
man(1)'s -k option.
By default, makewhatis creates a database in each dir using the files
mansection/[arch/]title.section and catsection/[arch/]title.0 in that
directory. Existing databases are replaced. If a directory contains no
manual pages, no database is created in that directory. If dir is not
provided, makewhatis uses the default paths stipulated by man.conf(5).
The arguments are as follows:
-a Use all directories and files found below dir ....
-C file Specify an alternative configuration file in man.conf(5) format.
-D Display all files added or removed to the index. With a second
-D, also show all keywords added for each file.
-d dir Merge (remove and re-add) file ... to the database in dir.
-n Do not create or modify any database; scan and parse only, and
print manual page names and descriptions to standard output.
-p Print warnings about potential problems with manual pages to the
standard error output.
-Q Quickly build reduced-size databases by reading only the NAME
sections of manuals. The resulting databases will usually
contain names and descriptions only.
-T utf8 Use UTF-8 encoding instead of ASCII for strings stored in the
databases.
-t file ...
Check the given files for potential problems. Implies -a, -n,
and -p. All diagnostic messages are printed to the standard
output; the standard error output is not used.
-u dir Remove file ... from the database in dir. If that causes the
database to become empty, also delete the database file.
If fatal parse errors are encountered while parsing, the offending file
is printed to stderr, omitted from the index, and the parse continues
with the next input file.
ENVIRONMENT
MANPATH A colon-separated list of directories to create databases in.
Ignored if a dir argument or the -t option is specified.
FILES
mandoc.db
A database of manpages relative to the directory of the file.
This file is portable across architectures and systems, so long
as the manpage hierarchy it indexes does not change.
/etc/man.conf
The default man(1) configuration file.
EXIT STATUS
The makewhatis utility exits with one of the following values:
0 No errors occurred.
5 Invalid command line arguments were specified. No input files
have been read.
6 An operating system error occurred, for example memory exhaustion
or an error accessing input files. Such errors cause makewhatis
to exit at once, possibly in the middle of parsing or formatting
a file. The output databases are corrupt and should be removed.
SEE ALSO
apropos(1), man(1), whatis(1), man.conf(5)
HISTORY
A makewhatis utility first appeared in 2BSD. It was rewritten in perl(1)
for OpenBSD 2.7 and in C for OpenBSD 5.6.
The dir argument first appeared in NetBSD 1.0; the options -dpt in
OpenBSD 2.7; the option -u in OpenBSD 3.4; and the options -aCDnQT in
OpenBSD 5.6.
AUTHORS
Bill Joy wrote the original BSD makewhatis in February 1979, Marc Espie
started the Perl version in 2000, and the current version of makewhatis
was written by Kristaps Dzonsons <kristaps@bsd.lv> and Ingo Schwarze
<schwarze@openbsd.org>.
DragonFly 5.5-DEVELOPMENT May 17, 2017 DragonFly 5.5-DEVELOPMENT