[MacPorts] #56313: Please consider removing the conflict between groff and mandoc

MacPorts noreply at macports.org
Wed Apr 18 02:56:49 UTC 2018


#56313: Please consider removing the conflict between groff and mandoc
---------------------------+------------------------
  Reporter:  teoric        |      Owner:  grimreaper
      Type:  enhancement   |     Status:  assigned
  Priority:  Normal        |  Milestone:
 Component:  ports         |    Version:
Resolution:                |   Keywords:
      Port:  groff mandoc  |
---------------------------+------------------------
Description changed by ryandesign:

Old description:

> Macports currently declares a conflict between `groff` and `mandoc`.  For
> manpage viewing, this conflict may exist (in the sense that you can only
> use one program at a time for a given command), but can be avoided
> renaming commands.  For typesetting, mandoc is evidently not an
> alternative.  Even the current `mandoc` maintainer agrees it can be
> useful to install both `groff` and `mandoc`, see
> [https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/mandoc/] (quote below):
>

>   Mandoc is neither a full replacement for groff nor intended as such.
> It is not even aiming to be a real typesetting system.
>
>   In addition to that, and to the aspect [that] mandoc does not support
> many important macro sets nor all of the low-level roff(7) language[],
> there are two more reasons why i need both installed in parallel all the
> time: (1) A small number of manual pages - about 0.25% in the wild -
> still require groff and do not work with mandoc. (2) Having both
> installed in parallel is required for routine output comparisons - mandoc
> even provides a convenience script to do such comparisons.
>
>   Besides, the mandoc build system provides support for renaming several
> of the installed files precisely to allow installation in parallel with
> other `man(1)` implementations (even though i believe that mandoc is a
> full replacement for man-db and similar packages - but conflicts are
> always a pain and can easily be avoided in this case).

New description:

 Macports currently declares a conflict between `groff` and `mandoc`.  For
 manpage viewing, this conflict may exist (in the sense that you can only
 use one program at a time for a given command), but can be avoided
 renaming commands.  For typesetting, mandoc is evidently not an
 alternative.  Even the current `mandoc` maintainer agrees it can be useful
 to install both `groff` and `mandoc`, see
 [https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/mandoc/] (quote below):

 > Mandoc is neither a full replacement for groff nor intended as such.  It
 is not even aiming to be a real typesetting system.
 >
 > In addition to that, and to the aspect [that] mandoc does not support
 many important macro sets nor all of the low-level roff(7) language[],
 there are two more reasons why i need both installed in parallel all the
 time: (1) A small number of manual pages - about 0.25% in the wild - still
 require groff and do not work with mandoc. (2) Having both installed in
 parallel is required for routine output comparisons - mandoc even provides
 a convenience script to do such comparisons.
 >
 > Besides, the mandoc build system provides support for renaming several
 of the installed files precisely to allow installation in parallel with
 other `man(1)` implementations (even though i believe that mandoc is a
 full replacement for man-db and similar packages - but conflicts are
 always a pain and can easily be avoided in this case).

--

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Ticket URL: <https://trac.macports.org/ticket/56313#comment:3>
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