Re: MANPATH and overriding/modifying default paths.

[Ingo Schwarze <schwarze@usta.de>]

Hi Kristaps,

Kristaps Dzonsons wrote on Sun, Dec 18, 2011 at 04:08:20PM +0100:
> On 18/12/2011 15:52, Kristaps Dzonsons wrote:

>> A while back, I complained to Ingo that MANPATH is heavy-handed: it
>> doesn't allow us to modify the default search path (in, e.g.,
>> /etc/man.conf), but only override it.
>>
>> He mentioned that in manpath(1) used on systems, MANPATH can modify
>> instead of override by placemen to colons. To wit:

> Ugh, I obviously shouldn't type so quickly... "the manpath(1)
> utility (Mac OS X, FreeBSD, Linux) can modify the default list by
> placement of colons".

Heh, you are doing that for manpath(1)-based systems only.
In that case, i have certainly no objection.

Hum, how do we document that, if it is done for manpath(1),
but not for man.conf(5)?  Not sure, but that's hardly a show
stopper, that can certainly be solved.

Maybe it might be useful for man.conf(5)-based systems as well.
But i'm not really sure; i never needed it, and i'm a bit hesitant
to change utilities to use environment variables for yet more
functionality.  In any case, i'd rather not change the semantics
related to man.conf(5) right now, to not interfere with getting
apropos(1) ready.  We can return to it later, when we want to.

Yours,
  Ingo
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