INSTALL

Name
       Install - instructions for installing the pages into the system

Synopsis
       sudo make [-j] install [prefix=ARG] [DESTDIR=ARG] [...]

Description
   (a)  Use a package manager
       If you want to install the manual pages into your system,
       consider installing them through your package manager from an
       official release, instead of installing them from this
       repository.  This repository contains the newest manual pages,
       but using an official release and the system package manager
       offers important benefits.  On a Debian system it would be:

           $ sudo apt-get install -V manpages-dev manpages

       If you prefer to install the manual pages from this repository,
       maybe because your system ships a too old version, consider
       updating the package offered by your system.  See the <RELEASE>
       file, and also talk to the maintainer of the package in your
       distribution.

   (b)  Install manually from source
       If you are contributing to the project, you may want to install
       the manual pages from this repository to test them, instead of
       using an official release.  Or maybe your distribution installs
       packages from source code without any package manager.

       In most cases, you just want to install all of the manual pages,
       and nothing else.  To install them in the default system
       directory (per GNU guidelines), use:

           $ sudo make install

       It takes a few seconds, so it's fine to do it in parallel with:

           $ sudo make -j install

       A few features can be used to tweak the install:

       Variables
           There are many variables available with which you can tweak
           the build system.  Most of them are directory variables and
           command variables, based on the GNU Coding Standards.  Others
           are specially designed for this project.  To see all of the
           available variables, use:

               $ make help

           The most common ones that you may use are:

           -  DESTDIR
           -  prefix

       Uninstall
           You can uninstall the pages with the following command (but
           see the "Caveats" section below):

               $ sudo make uninstall

       Targets
           There are targets for more granular control, such as
           'install-man3'.  See the help to know all of them:

               $ make help

   Dependencies
       To see the build-dependencies of the project, that is, the
       dependencies of the build system, see `make help`.

       To read the manual pages, you'll need:

       -  man(1)
       -  groff(1) | mandoc(1)

   Lint & check
       You can lint and check both the manual pages, and the example C
       programs contained in them.  See 'make help' for a list of
       targets that can be used.

Files
   GNUmakefile, share/mk/install-man.mk, share/mk/install.mk
       Main makefiles for installing (however, others may also be used
       by inclusion).

   share/mk/cmd.mk
       Command variables.

   share/mk/install-html.mk
       Makefile to install HTML manual pages.

   share/mk/verbose.mk
       Handle verbose settings.

   share/mk/*
       Other makefiles.

   man*/*
       Manual pages.

   /usr/local/share/man/man*/*
       Default location for installed pages.

Standards
       We follow closely the GNU Coding Standards:
       <https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/Directory-Variables.html>.
       <https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/Command-Variables.html>.

       And the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard:
       <https://refspecs.linuxfoundation.org/FHS_3.0/fhs/index.html>

       But deviate from them in some cases, the most notable case being
       the use of directories for manual subsections, such as
       <man3type/>.

Caveats
   Uninstall
       You can uninstall the pages.  However, take into account that it
       will only uninstall pages that exist in the repository.  This
       means that if you installed the manual pages from source from an
       older version of the repository with 'make install', and some
       page was [re]moved later, it won't be uninstalled.  You should
       probably install with a prefix of prefix=/opt/local/man-pages to
       be able to nuke the directory later with
       'rm -r /opt/local/man-pages'.  However, you'll need to modify
       your $MANPATH to be able to use those manual pages as if they
       were in a system path.

   Version and last-modified date
       If you're an end user or a distributor, make sure you do this
       (install) from a tarball, and not from the git repository.  The
       manual pages in the repository have placeholders for the version
       and last modified date, which are filled when creating the
       tarball.  You can create your own tarball, for which you need to
       read the RELEASE file.

See also
       gmake(1)