manpath

[Vincent Lefevre]

On 2008-10-27 20:01:48 -0500, Ryan Schmidt wrote:
> Apple sets the MANPATH to "/usr/share/man:/usr/local/share/man:/usr/ 
> X11/man" on Leopard for you. So at least Apple doesn't think it should 
> end with a colon.

Apple often does things wrong. Try (while having /opt/local/bin in
$PATH):

MANPATH="/usr/share/man:/usr/local/share/man:/usr/X11/man" man port

MANPATH="/usr/share/man:/usr/local/share/man:/usr/X11/man:" man port

Normally the first one should fail and the second should work.

MANPATH should probably be unset anyway.

> The MacPorts installer does add the MacPorts path to the MANPATH for you 
> in your .profile if MANPATH is not empty and does not already contain the 
> MacPorts manpath. Are you saying the MacPorts installer shouldn't do 
> that?

A (non-empty) MANPATH containing an empty path (i.e. a colon at the
beginning or at the end, or a "::" sequence) and not containing the
MacPorts manpath is correct, because the empty path will be replaced
by the default paths, that will normally be built using $PATH. The
user may have set up such a MANPATH, and if you modify it, this can
be wrong as you will change the path order.

-- 
Vincent Lefèvre <vincent at vinc17.org> - Web: <http://www.vinc17.org/>
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Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / Arenaire project (LIP, ENS-Lyon)