manpath

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Oct 27, 2008, at 07:10, Vincent Lefevre wrote:

> On 2008-10-27 07:29:34 +0100, Rainer Müller wrote:
>
>> Shawn Protsman wrote:
>>
>>> To my surprise I got no entry found when I did a 'man port'. What is
>>> the recommended method to add port manpages to the path?
>>>
>>> Create a '/etc/paths.d/macports'?
>>>
>>> Or add to .profile:
>>>
>>> export MANPATH=/opt/local/share/man:$MANPATH
>>
>> The latter. Using paths.d would append the MANPATH at the end, but
>> usually you want to add new items in front of the system provided  
>> ones.
>
> Normally you don't even need to do anything. Having /opt/local/bin
> in $path should be sufficient.
>
> FYI, my $MANPATH is empty. This is often better this way, otherwise
> there is the risk of having inconsistencies when $PATH has several
> programs of the same name (each one having its own man page).

On Tiger and earlier, MANPATH is empty by default and so having /opt/ 
local/bin in PATH is sufficient. However on Leopard and I assume  
later, MANPATH is non-empty by default so you need to add /opt/local/ 
share/man to MANPATH. The MacPorts installer sets this up for you as  
needed on your OS (except of course for the bug in the 1.6.0  
installer which will be fixed by the 1.7.0 installer).