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@@ -0,0 +1,1982 @@ +man-db 2.8.5 (5 January 2019) +============================= + +Major changes since man-db 2.8.4: + + Building man-db now requires Autoconf >= 2.63 and Automake >= + 1.11.2. + + Fixes: + ------ + + * Fix build with Berkeley DB. + + * Fail to configure if flex is needed but missing. + + * Fix the comment in the first line of the configuration file in the + case where configure was not given a --with-config-file option. + + * Fix several resource and memory leaks. + + * Fix handling of \- in the right-hand side of a NAME section. + + * Work around Microsoft's proprietary "System Center Endpoint + Protection" antivirus program in the seccomp sandbox. + + Improvements: + ------------- + + * Ship a systemd timer to perform daily database maintenance. + + * Allow disabling the installation of the systemd tmpfiles snippet + and the systemd timer by configuring with + --with-systemdtmpfilesdir=no and --with-systemdsystemunitdir=no + respectively. + +man-db 2.8.4 (27 July 2018) +=========================== + +Major changes since man-db 2.8.3: + + Fixes: + ------ + + * Rely on decompressors reading from their standard input rather + than redundantly passing them the input file on their command + line. This works better with downstream AppArmor confinement of + decompressors. + + * Fix invalid syntax in tmpfiles.d/man-db.conf when configured with + --disable-cache-owner. + + * Make seccomp sandbox allow sched_getaffinity, sometimes used by + xz. + + * Check for mandb_nfmt and mandb_tfmt in the manual page hierarchy + as documented, not in the current directory. This was broken by + the working-directory-handling changes in 2.8.3. Note that this + change means that "man -l" will never use an external formatter + (which was never documented behaviour and was surely a bad idea). + + * Make seccomp sandbox allow some shared memory operations across + the board rather than just when ESET File Security is in use; the + Astrill VPN seems to require something similar, and there are + doubtless other such preload hacks. + + * Some versions of ESET File Security call msgget and msgsnd; if + this program is in use, then allow those. + +man-db 2.8.3 (5 April 2018) +=========================== + +Major changes since man-db 2.8.2: + + Fixes: + ------ + + * Make seccomp sandbox allow madvise, since that's used by lbzip2. + + * Make seccomp sandbox allow kill and tgkill outright, since groff + uses kill to pass on signals to its child processes. + + * Make seccomp sandbox allow sibling architectures on + x86/x86_64/x32, since people sometimes mix and match architectures + there for performance reasons. + + * Fix version check in locale macro loading to tolerate groff + release candidates. + + * man now only changes working directory in child processes, so + never fails due to being unable to change back to its original + working directory. + + * accessdb, apropos, and lexgrog no longer emit spurious gettext + headers in their --help output when localised. + +man-db 2.8.2 (28 February 2018) +=============================== + +Major changes since man-db 2.8.1: + + Fixes: + ------ + + * Make seccomp sandbox allow kill and tgkill when the signal is + directed at the current process or one of its threads; this is + needed by xz. + + * Make seccomp sandbox allow ioctl(fd, TIOCGWINSZ), since that's used + by musl. + + * Work around the proprietary "ESET File Security" antivirus program in + seccomp sandbox: if this is in use then we need to allow some + socket-related system calls. + + * Work around the "snoopy" execve() wrapper and logger in seccomp + sandbox: if this is in use then we need to allow some + socket-related system calls. + + * Interpret EFAULT from seccomp_load as meaning that seccomp is + unavailable, since this can be returned by some versions of + qemu-user. + +man-db 2.8.1 (9 February 2018) +============================== + +Major changes since man-db 2.8.0: + + Fixes: + ------ + + * Fix seccomp sandbox build on Linux/POWER. + + * Fix manconv execution under seccomp when man is installed setuid. + + * Make seccomp sandbox allow mremap (used by iconv, for example). + + Improvements: + ------------- + + * configure now has a --without-libseccomp option to disable the use + of seccomp even if the library is available. + +man-db 2.8.0 (4 February 2018) +============================== + +Major changes since man-db 2.7.6.1: + + Fixes: + ------ + + * Fix locale macro loading for Chinese to load the macro file + corresponding to just the language part of the user's locale. + + * Honour --enable-cache-owner in generated systemd tmpfiles snippet + rather than hardcoding "man". + + * If man adds prefixes to a page to handle such things as disabling + hyphenation, then take account of those when looking for a + preprocessor line at the start of the page. + + * Fix a segfault in 'man -D --help'. + + Improvements: + ------------- + + * Treat "\(en" as another synonym for "\-" in NAME sections. + + * Confine most subprocesses that handle untrusted data using + seccomp. This mainly deals with subprocesses that perform + encoding conversions, (de)compressors, groff programs, and a few + other odds and ends. groff programs use a slightly more + permissive filter since they need to create temporary files, so + additional path-based confinement (e.g. using AppArmor) is still + useful. + + If this goes wrong, then MAN_DISABLE_SECCOMP=1 can be set in the + environment to disable it, but please report any such problem as a + bug. + + * man now falls back to cat if the compile-time default pager is not + executable. + +man-db 2.7.6.1 (12 December 2016) +================================= + +Major changes since man-db 2.7.6: + + Fixes: + ------ + + * Don't chmod CACHEDIR.TAG if it doesn't exist. + + * Correct installation of Swedish manual pages. + +man-db 2.7.6 (11 December 2016) +=============================== + +Major changes since man-db 2.7.5: + + Fixes: + ------ + + * Fix build warnings with Perl 5.22. + + * Document that 'man -K' searches page source, not rendered text. + + * Fix a long-standing bug in man-db's internal cleanup stack + mechanism: if a cleanup function was pushed unexpectedly between a + push/pop pair, then popping the stack would remove the wrong + cleanup function and chaos could ensue. Avoid this by being more + precise about which cleanup function should be popped. + + * SECURITY: Eliminate dangerous setgid-root directories. In the + default configuration, cache files and directories are now owned + by man:man rather than man:root; man and mandb are now setgid man + as well as setuid man (except in the --disable-setuid case). This + is a much simpler and safer solution to the original problem that + caused my predecessor to make directories setgid root, and doesn't + introduce any interesting new privilege since the man group's only + real purpose is to be the man user's primary group and nothing in + cache directories is group-writeable. + + Maintainers of distribution packagers should take care to review + their installation rules in light of this change. + + As far as I know this has no CVE ID, but it is described here: + + https://www.halfdog.net/Security/2015/SetgidDirectoryPrivilegeEscalation/ + + * Fix manual page translation infrastructure to render tables + correctly with po4a 0.47. + + Improvements: + ------------- + + * man now understands the <page>.<section> form on its command line, + so for example 'man chmod.2' is now the same as 'man 2 chmod'. + (Contributed by Mihail Konev.) + + * The owner of cache files is now configured separately from whether + man and mandb are installed setuid, using the + --enable-cache-owner[=USER] option. + +man-db 2.7.5 (6 November 2015) +============================== + +Major changes since man-db 2.7.4: + + Fixes: + ------ + + * Adjust line number when inserting extra roff input. + + * Disable roff input insertion with --recode. + + * Build text manual with LC_ALL=C, to help reproducible builds. + +man-db 2.7.4 (8 October 2015) +============================= + +Major changes since man-db 2.7.3: + + Fixes: + ------ + + * Fix crash when eliminating manpath duplicates if canonicalising a + manpath entry fails. + + * Fix a build system bug that sometimes caused substitutions in + manual pages to be left unexpanded. + + * man exits with status 3 rather than 0 if its formatting command + exits non-zero, even if its display command exits zero. + + * man honours MANWIDTH in conjunction with the -Z option, to make it + easier to diagnose warnings in manual pages. + +man-db 2.7.3 (9 September 2015) +=============================== + +Major changes since man-db 2.7.2: + + Fixes: + ------ + + * Tools that consider the terminal line length now try the + TIOCGWINSZ ioctl on /dev/tty as well as standard input/output. + + * mandb does a better job of coping with index files having + incorrect ownership. + + * Squeeze blank lines internally rather than relying on the pager + supporting the -s option. + + * Fix use-after-free in ult_src. + + * Fix crash when running from a missing and unreadable current + directory, such as an orphaned subdirectory of /proc. + + * Restore the ability to use 'man -a' noninteractively. + +man-db 2.7.2 (16 August 2015) +============================= + +Major changes since man-db 2.7.1: + + Fixes: + ------ + + * 'man -k' and 'man -f' now pass any provided -l option through to + the underlying apropos/whatis programs. + + * apropos and whatis no longer truncate names if long output was + requested. + + * The database handle is no longer stored in a global variable, + fixing a class of possible double-close bugs. + +man-db 2.7.1 (7 November 2014) +============================== + +Major changes since man-db 2.7.0.2: + + Fixes: + ------ + + * Various portability fixes for Solaris, contributed by Peter Bray. + + * man now runs correctly when its current working directory has been + deleted. (As a result of this fix, man-db now requires + libpipeline >= 1.4.0.) + + * 'man -a' sends its prompts to /dev/tty rather than to stderr, and + likewise reads replies from /dev/tty rather than from stdin. + +man-db 2.7.0.2 (28 September 2014) +================================== + +Major changes since man-db 2.7.0.1: + + Fixes: + ------ + + * Be more careful to avoid using or double-closing closed database + handles. Fixes test suite failures on some systems. + + * Patch the fdutimens function imported from Gnulib to work around a + libc bug in GNU/Hurd. + +man-db 2.7.0.1 (24 September 2014) +================================== + +Major changes since man-db 2.7.0: + + Fixes: + ------ + + * Fix test suite in the case where the system supports + high-precision timestamps but the file system containing the build + directory does not. + +man-db 2.7.0 (22 September 2014) +================================ + +Major changes since man-db 2.6.7.1: + + Upgrading from previous versions: + --------------------------------- + + For the first time since version 2.4.0, the database format has + changed slightly, so you will need to run 'mandb --create' after + installing the new version to rebuild your databases from scratch. + (Distribution packages should do this automatically for system + databases.) + + Fixes: + ------ + + * lexgrog now filters terminal escape sequences out of cat pages + before trying to parse them. + + * Tools that consider the terminal line length now prioritise the + COLUMNS environment variable above the TIOCGWINSZ ioctl. + + * Manpath elements are no longer canonicalised before being inserted + into the search path; this caused the use of incorrect catpaths in + some cases. This was broken by the LANGUAGE-handling fixes in + 2.5.4. + + Improvements: + ------------- + + * Ship a systemd tmpfiles snippet to clean up old cat files after a + week. + + * The modification time of manual databases is now simply stored in + the mtime of the database files themselves, rather than using a + special row. This makes databases reproducible between + otherwise-identical installations, as long as the underlying + database has predictable behaviour. As a bonus, man-db now uses + high-precision timestamps to determine whether it needs to update + databases. + + * Timestamps of manual pages are also now stored in the database + with high precision and compared accordingly. + + * Files are now ordered by first physical extent before reading + them, for substantial performance improvements in operations such + as mandb and 'man -K'. + + * 'man -H' shows a better error message if no browser is configured. + + * zsoelim is now installed in $pkglibexecdir, to avoid clashes with + other packages. + +man-db 2.6.7.1 (10 April 2014) +============================== + +Major changes since man-db 2.6.7: + + Fixes: + ------ + + * Remove test suite dependency on realpath(1). + +man-db 2.6.7 (10 April 2014) +============================ + +Major changes since man-db 2.6.6: + + Fixes: + ------ + + * Fix a test failure when configured with --enable-undoc. + + * Run the pager in man's original working directory rather than in + the manual hierarchy. (As a result of this fix, man-db now + requires libpipeline >= 1.3.0.) + + * mandb only creates a cache directory tag if the catpath is + different from the manpath, since it should only be created in + directories that consist entirely of cached information. + +man-db 2.6.6 (23 January 2014) +============================== + +Major changes since man-db 2.6.5: + + man-db is now revision-controlled using git (https://git-scm.com/). + See docs/HACKING for the location of the repository. + + Fixes: + ------ + + * apropos's --and option now works again; it was broken by the + optimisations in 2.6.2. + + * Restore compatibility with Automake 1.10. + + * Improve support for translation of common elements of help + messages. + + * Don't issue error messages when the database refers to a page that + no longer exists. + + * Pass macro and hyphenation language tags to groff again (broken in + 2.6.5). + + Improvements: + ------------- + + * ./configure --with-override-dir=OVERRIDE arranges to look for + manual pages in DIR/OVERRIDE before each path element DIR. + +man-db 2.6.5 (27 June 2013) +=========================== + +Major changes since man-db 2.6.4: + + Fixes: + ------ + + * man's --warnings option works again on systems with versions of + groff that support it (broken in 2.6.4). + + * man automatically falls back to C.UTF-8 and then en_US.UTF-8 if + trying to find a UTF-8 locale on a system without + /usr/share/i18n/SUPPORTED. + +man-db 2.6.4 (23 June 2013) +=========================== + +Major changes since man-db 2.6.3: + + Fixes: + ------ + + * man(1) and catman(8) now document the default section list set at + configure time. + + * Build fixes for Automake 1.13. + + * man-db 2.6.0 arranged to search the full manpath when expanding + .so directives in manual pages (so that ".so name.1" works as well + as ".so man1/name.1"), but this incorrectly did not take effect + for manual pages that consist only of a .so directive. This is + now fixed. + + Improvements: + ------------- + + * The MANLESS environment variable is now treated as if it were a + default value for the -r option to man: occurrences of the text + "$MAN_PN" are expanded, and explicitly using the -r option + overrides the default. + + * The (unfortunately still hardcoded) maximum length for paths to + manual page hierarchies in the configuration file is now 511 + characters rather than 49. + + * MANPATH entries now undergo glob(7)-style wildcard expansion, + allowing entries such as "/opt/*/man". + +man-db 2.6.3 (17 September 2012) +================================ + +Major changes since man-db 2.6.2: + + Fixes: + ------ + + * Build fixes for glibc 2.16 and Automake 1.12. + +man-db 2.6.2 (18 June 2012) +=========================== + +Major changes since man-db 2.6.1: + + Fixes: + ------ + + * apropos prints an error message and returns non-zero when it finds + no matches. (Regression introduced in 2.5.1.) + + * The presence of a 64-bit GDBM database on the manpath no longer + causes a 32-bit man process to exit with a fatal error. + + Improvements: + ------------- + + * apropos is much faster when run with many arguments. + + * whatis may be given the full path to an executable as an argument, + in which case it will look up the base name of that executable in + the appropriate parts of the manpath. + +man-db 2.6.1 (14 February 2012) +=============================== + +Major changes since man-db 2.6.0.2: + + Fixes: + ------ + + * --with-db=db* and --with-db=ndbm compile again. + + * Translated manual pages are no longer displayed starting with a + spurious blank line. + + * straycats tries to ensure that col is invoked with LC_CTYPE set to + a UTF-8 locale. + + * Fix double-free in mandb when encountering a symlink outside the + manual hierarchy, thanks to Peter Schiffer. + + Improvements: + ------------- + + * mandb creates a cache directory tag, per + http://www.brynosaurus.com/cachedir/ ("Cache Directory Tagging + Standard"). + + * Add support for Lzip-compressed manual pages, thanks to Matias A. + Fonzo. + + * Running 'man -w' (with a new --path alias) without a name now + prints the manpath, for compatibility with other man + implementations. The vim viewdoc plugin makes use of this. + +man-db 2.6.0.2 (13 April 2011) +============================== + +Major changes since man-db 2.6.0.1: + + Fixes: + ------ + + * Fix a segfault when scanning links to empty pages. + + * Once we've seen at least one record in a page's NAME section, + ignore any further records that don't include a whatis + description, as they tend to be noise. + +man-db 2.6.0.1 (10 April 2011) +============================== + +Major changes since man-db 2.6.0: + + Fixes: + ------ + + * Ensure that the target of a symlink or .so chain is always recorded + as a real page. + + * Read a user-specified configuration file even if HOME is unset. + +man-db 2.6.0 (9 April 2011) +=========================== + +Major changes since man-db 2.5.9: + + Fixes: + ------ + + * Fix build with versions of GNU ld that default to + --no-copy-dt-needed-entries. + + * Fix failure to display manual pages in some encodings when + installed setuid. + + * Wrap long table cells in man(1), fixing test failures with groff + 1.21. + + * If an explicit section is passed to man, then pages that match + that section exactly will be preferred over pages that only have + that section as a prefix. + + * Fix a segfault when 'man -K' tries to display certain pages. + + * Fix a segfault in some situations when processes are killed by + SIGHUP, SIGINT, or SIGTERM. + + Improvements: + ------------- + + * As promised in the release notes for man-db 2.5.8, man-db no + longer ships its own copy of libpipeline + (http://libpipeline.nongnu.org/). You must build and install that + library separately. + + * Search the full manpath when expanding .so directives in manual + pages. As part of this, '.so name.1' should now work as well as + '.so man1/name.1'. + + * lexgrog handles roff named glyphs and perldoc strings in NAME + sections. + + * man no longer starts a pager if standard output is not a tty. + + * The -s option to whatis and apropos now takes a colon- or + comma-separated list of sections, similar to 'man -S'. + + * mandb error output is neater when stderr is not a terminal. + + * Add basic support for the implementation of nroff/troff in the + Heirloom Documentation Tools. Title lengths are not properly set + as yet, and many features are untested. + + * mandb removes cat* and NLS subdirectories of cat directories whose + corresponding man directories no longer exist. + + * mandb forces SIGPIPE back to its default disposition on startup, + to avoid noisy output in case it was started in a context where + SIGPIPE was ignored. + + * SECTION entries in a user configuration file now override those in + the system configuration file, rather than appending to them. + + * The default less prompt now includes "(press h for help or q to + quit)" to help novices find their way around. + + * man-db may now be built to use Berkeley DB version 5 + (--with-db=db5). + +man-db 2.5.9 (17 November 2010) +=============================== + +Major changes since man-db 2.5.8: + + Fixes: + ------ + + * Fix test failures on some systems. A change made in 2.5.8 was + overly sensitive to directory ordering. + + * Configuring with --disable-nls works again. + +man-db 2.5.8 (15 November 2010) +=============================== + +Major changes since man-db 2.5.7: + + Fixes: + ------ + + * Fix assertion failure on 'man -l' with an uncompressed page and + any of --no-hyphenation, --no-justification, or a non-English + page. + + * 2.5.7 introduced a regression when running catman in some locales, + most notably in the C locale: while converting the output to + UTF-8, iconv was run after the compressor rather than before it. + This release fixes that. + + Improvements: + ------------- + + * Add support for XZ-compressed manual pages, thanks to Darren Salt. + + * Try underscore-separated subpages as well as hyphen-separated + ones, thanks to Tanguy Ortolo. + + * Build libman and libmandb as shared libraries, reducing installed + footprint by about 200K (at least on GNU/Linux). + + * libintl is no longer shipped with man-db. If your system does not + already have GNU libintl installed and you want man-db's messages + to be translated, then please install GNU libintl separately + (https://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/). + + * Warnings about unrecognised locales are now suppressed if the + DPKG_RUNNING_VERSION environment variable is set (i.e. man-db is + running within a Debian package's maintainer script), since the + system locales are often out of sync with the C library in that + context. Thanks to the Debian Perl maintainers for the idea. + + * Allow building with an external libpipeline + (http://libpipeline.nongnu.org/), which has been split out from + man-db. This is a transitional measure: a future version of + man-db will stop shipping its own copy of libpipeline. + + * mandb should no longer repeatedly rescan manual page hierarchies + when a whatis entry turns into a broken link. + +man-db 2.5.7 (16 February 2010) +=============================== + +Major changes since man-db 2.5.6: + + Fixes: + ------ + + * If a subprocess exits before man manages to read all the output + from it, it now drains the output file descriptor rather than + immediately discarding it. + + * If /usr/share/i18n/SUPPORTED is available, man attempts to use it + to ensure that LC_CTYPE is set to an appropriate locale for the + selected character set when invoking col. This fixes 'LANG=C man + -E UTF-8', as used by lintian. + + * Don't run tests if cross-compiling. + + * Fix possible mandb crash when MAN_MUST_CREATE is unset. + + Improvements: + ------------- + + * man can now tell nroff to disable justification if the + --no-justification option is used. + + * If the full path to an executable is given as an argument, man + will try looking up the corresponding manual page in the + appropriate part of the manpath, rather than just trying to format + the text of the executable as a manual page. + + * In the GNU manual hierarchy layout, search man<sec><ext> + directories as well as just man<sec> (e.g. /usr/share/man/man3p as + well as /usr/share/man/man3). + + * By request, man now prefers getting a page from the best manual + section over getting a page in the correct language. + + * All programs now support a MAN_DEBUG environment variable which + can be used in place of the -d/--debug option. This is useful in + some situations where a program is being called deep in a process + tree. + + * man-db now builds with heirloom-doctools, thanks to Diego Pettenò + of Gentoo. + + * Add support for emulating pipe() with socketpair(), which is + faster on some systems; thanks to Werner Fink of SUSE. + + * Cat pages are now always saved in UTF-8, and converted to the + proper encoding at display time, which means that cat pages can + now be saved regardless of locale. Note that a consequence of this + is that cat pages now include formatting information (e.g. + overstriking) and need to be run through col(1) before display. + +man-db 2.5.6 (26 August 2009) +============================= + +Major changes since man-db 2.5.5: + + Fixes: + ------ + + * Exact-section database lookups were incorrectly returning all + database entries whose section names were prefixes of the + requested section name. In some cases this could confuse mandb + into never believing that the database was up to date. + + * Fix handling of pages with comma-separated names ("foo, bar, + baz") in their NAME sections, broken by a change in 2.5.0 (!) + to ignore manual page names containing spaces. + + * Fixed a buffer overflow in the pipeline library's line-reading + functions. I don't believe this to be exploitable: at worst we + might believe that there's some garbage at the end of manual pages + (whose contents are untrusted anyway) and this bug typically + resulted in a failed assertion the next time anything tried to + read a line. + + * Plugged two substantial memory leaks in the pipeline library. + + * whatis and apropos only display any given manual page, or pointers + to it, once. + + * man now sets less(1)'s environment up correctly for manual pages + encoded in CP1251. + + * manconv no longer confuses situations such as "this UTF-8 + character is not representable in the target encoding" with "this + text is not in UTF-8". + + Improvements: + ------------- + + * The default configuration file now includes section 0, used on + some systems to document C library header files. + + * 'make check' now passes in the presence of a UTF-8-aware col, such + as that in util-linux-ng. + + * The 'man -K' option is now supported to search the full text of + all manual pages. This was inspired by a similar option in the + other man package (currently at version 1.6f) currently maintained + by Federico Lucifredi and formerly by Andries Brouwer, but I took + advantage of man-db's pipeline library to implement it entirely + in-process, without having to start a separate grep process for + every manual page. In my tests with fairly typical searches across + variously all manual pages or just one section, man-db's + implementation ran between 3 and 10 times faster. + + * Database directories are now only created when there are + corresponding manual page directories, not just because they're + mentioned in the configuration file. + + * By default, man will now try to interpret pairs of manual page + names given on the command line as equivalent to a single manual + page name containing a hyphen (e.g. 'man foo bar' => foo-bar(1)). + This supports the common pattern of programs that implement a + number of subcommands, allowing them to provide manual pages for + each that can be accessed using similar syntax as would be used to + invoke the subcommands themselves. Suggested by H. Peter Anvin, + Federico Lucifredi, and others on the git mailing list. + + * The build process is now quieter by default. Use './configure + --disable-silent-rules' or 'make V=0' if you don't like this or + your make(1) doesn't support the non-standard extension required. + + * 'make install' now installs the manual. + + * manconv understands a wider range of Emacs-style coding tags. + + * Recommendations to change MAN_DB_CREATES, MAN_DB_UPDATES, and + MAN_CATS #define options in manconfig.h have been replaced by new + configure options --enable-automatic-create, + --disable-automatic-update, and --disable-cats respectively. Note + that automatic user database creation is now off by default, as it + is often too slow for the usefulness it adds; use + --enable-automatic-create to enable it. + +man-db 2.5.5 (14 March 2009) +============================ + +Major changes since man-db 2.5.4: + + Fixes: + ------ + + * Pages that declare a non-default encoding in their preprocessor + lines are now handled correctly. + + * Fix an uninitialised variable when sorting manual page candidates + that could lead to excessive memory allocation and possible + crashes. + + Improvements: + ------------- + + * man-db's 'make check' now tests that all its own manual pages + format without errors or warnings from groff, to ensure a + better-quality release. + +man-db 2.5.4 (24 February 2009) +=============================== + +Major changes since man-db 2.5.3: + + Fixes: + ------ + + * Build fixes for systems without GNU Make, and for systems without + gettext; this successfully covers at least FreeBSD. + + * The distclean target now works if po4a isn't installed. + + * Exit as soon as possible if database writes return ENOSPC. + + * lexgrog now stops on any unrecognised roff request, rather than + continuing and often littering the database with garbage. + + * man no longer requires both standard input and standard output to + be terminals in order to use the terminal line length. The line + length from standard output is preferred if available. + + * The manpath was built completely wrongly when multiple entries + were present in LANGUAGE: duplicates were handled strangely, and + languages were effectively iterated in reverse order. It should be + rather more sensible now. + + Improvements: + ------------- + + * The MAN_KEEP_STDERR environment variable can now be used to + override man's default of discarding stderr when stdout is a + terminal. + + * Handling of terminal widths for cat pages is now configurable, + using the MINCATWIDTH, MAXCATWIDTH, and CATWIDTH configuration + file directives. + + * 'man -a' now detects duplicate manual page candidates more + reliably, and sorts them better. + + * Belarusian, Estonian, Greek, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, + Romanian, Slovenian, and Ukrainian pages are now supported. + + * man can now search for pages using regular expressions (with + --regex) or shell wildcards (with --wildcard). By default this + searches both page names and descriptions, like apropos, but if + the --names-only option is used then it searches page names only, + like whatis. + + * man can now tell nroff to disable hyphenation if the + --no-hyphenation option is used. + + * man-db already searched for manual pages in ../man and man + directories relative to each $PATH component; it now searches in + ../share/man and share/man directories too. + + * Groff 1.20 was recently released, including the 'preconv' + preprocessor. Although man-db has supported preconv to some extent + since 2.4.4, man-db's configure now detects its presence and + infers that groff supports Unicode input using it; man also now + takes slightly better advantage of preconv than before. + + * Per-locale groff macros are now loaded if possible, allowing us to + take advantage of such things as localised versions of predefined + strings and language-aware hyphenation. This only works with Groff + 1.20.2 or better (not yet released), since earlier versions did + not allow us to suppress warnings in the event that the + appropriate macro file is not available. + +man-db 2.5.3 (17 November 2008) +=============================== + +Major changes since man-db 2.5.2: + + Fixes: + ------ + + * Cleaned up a number of possible crashes, memory leaks, and missing + error checks found by the Coverity Scan project. + + * Fix build if MAN_CATS is undefined. + + * If the LINGUAS environment variable is set while running + configure, it now controls building and installation of localised + manual pages as well as program translations. + + * The LANGUAGE environment variable is now tokenised properly, + rather than only taking the first two characters of each element. + + * Fix build if --disable-nls is used or iconv is not available. + + * man now correctly propagates the exit code of whatis or apropos + when called with the -f or -k option respectively. + + Improvements: + ------------- + + * A number of inconsistencies and readability problems with man-db's + own manual pages have been cleaned up, thanks mainly to Yuri + Kozlov. + + * Reduce the number of warnings emitted when using an unrecognised + locale. + + * manconv and zsoelim are now called internally rather than by + executing external programs, to improve performance. + + * man-db now uses GDBM (--with-db=gdbm) in preference to Berkeley DB + (--with-db=db or --with-db=dbN where N is 1, 2, 3, or 4) by + default, since hardware improvements have rendered Berkeley DB's + speed advantages negligible for our purposes and the relatively + frequent SONAME and on-disk format changes are not worth the + hassle. Distributors should note that if they follow this change + then they will need to arrange for databases to be rebuilt on + upgrade to this version. + + * Manual pages may now be compressed with LZMA (although this is + probably only worth it for very large pages). + + * Duplicate manual page hierarchies due to symlinks (e.g. /usr/man + -> /usr/share/man) are detected and removed from the search order. + + * A locale modifier (e.g. @latin) in a directory name must now match + the locale if the former is set, in addition to the language and + territory. + + * Bare .so includes (e.g. ".so foo.1" rather than ".so man1/foo.1") + now work, although only within the same manual page hierarchy for + now. + +man-db 2.5.2 (5 May 2008) +========================= + +Major changes since man-db 2.5.1: + + Fixes: + ------ + + * 'man -H' (without a browser argument) was completely broken in + 2.5.1 and is now fixed. + + * man no longer breaks in Japanese locales when using less as a + pager. + + Improvements: + ------------- + + * The --encoding option to man can now take a true character + encoding rather than a *roff device; the latter was an unreliable, + inflexible, and awkward way to select an output encoding. The old + semantics are still supported for backward compatibility. + + * Whatis parsing stops at .ie or .if conditionals. + + * CJK locale specifications where the codeset component is + equivalent to but not stringwise-identical to UTF-8 (e.g. + zh_CN.utf8) are handled better. + + * man(1)'s OPTIONS section is ordered more comprehensibly. + + * apropos, lexgrog, man, mandb, and whatis ignore encoding + conversion errors for the last possible encoding of the source + page. This helps, for example, with pages including misencoded + non-ASCII names of authors; it usually seems better to allow these + pages to pass with small errors than to break them entirely. + +man-db 2.5.1 (28 January 2008) +============================== + +Major changes since man-db 2.5.0: + + Fixes: + ------ + + * The manual is now built automatically, avoiding some ordering + problems on 'make distclean'. + + * Manual pages are converted to the proper input encoding for troff + output as well as nroff output. + + * The -t, -T, -X, and -Z options to man work again; in 2.5.0, they + read input from stdin rather than from the manual page. + + * apropos and whatis no longer segfault when given an explicit + locale using -L. + + * man now understands that groff's ascii device takes ASCII input, + not ISO-8859-1. + + * man no longer discards stderr when writing to a file or a pipe; + this was broken by an overenthusiastic change in 2.5.0. + + * manconv now falls back to the next encoding in its list if any + characters in an entire 64KB block fail to decode using the + current encoding, as was originally intended. + + * manconv is more careful about extracting coding: directives from + manual pages. + + * Ctrl-C and Ctrl-\ now work again at the prompt issued by 'man -a'. + + Improvements: + ------------- + + * There is a new --with-sections configure option to change the + default value of SECTION in the configuration file. + + * Automake is now used to generate Makefiles. Among other things, + this fixes VPATH builds and some bugs in dependency generation, + and should allow building with non-GNU versions of make. + + * man-db now uses the Gnulib portability library, allowing the + removal of earlier haphazard portability code. While this results + in a somewhat larger source distribution, it makes man-db easier + to maintain and should make it easier to build on systems to which + the maintainer does not have access. + + * In the process of switching to Gnulib, the last vestiges of + pre-C89 support have been removed; they were documented to be + broken anyway. + + * If the MANROFFOPT environment variable is set, man now appends its + value to the *roff command line. + + * man now accepts a --recode option to output a source manual page + converted to a specified encoding. + + * For compatibility with System V, man accepts -s as an alias for + -S, and permits sections to be comma-separated as well as + colon-separated. + + * All programs, except the obsolete 'wrapper', now accept a --debug + option. (accessdb, lexgrog, and zsoelim were lacking it.) + + * man now accepts a --warnings option to enable groff warnings. + +man-db 2.5.0 (7 October 2007) +============================= + +Major changes since man-db 2.4.4: + + Fixes: + ------ + + * mandb --quiet now suppresses several more warnings. + + * The output of apropos no longer includes duplicates when multiple + search terms are used. + + Improvements: + ------------- + + * Databases are now created for non-English manual hierarchies. All + database entries should be encoded in UTF-8; man-db converts from + the character set of the manual hierarchy and to the character set + specified in the user's locale as necessary. + + * Per-locale directory handling has been improved. Directories such + as "fr.UTF-8" may be used for occasions when it is appropriate to + specify the character set but not the country, and so a full + locale name is inconvenient. + + * There is a new "manconv" program which can try multiple possible + encodings for a file, thus allowing UTF-8 manual pages to be + installed in any directory even without an explicit encoding + declaration. + + * A decompression library is now in place. This allows man-db to use + zlib to decompress gzipped files, and allows most of its uses of + temporary files to be removed. The only remaining exceptions are + cat file creation (which uses a temporary file in the cat tree + rather than in /tmp) and viewing HTML manual pages (which uses a + temporary directory). Otherwise, man-db should now work fine even + with a read-only /tmp during system recovery. + + * Cat pages are now saved in the background while the pager is + active, so man will only need to block afterwards if the pager is + exited very quickly. + + * --with-* options are now available at configure time for most of + the auxiliary program locations that you might want to override. + + * man now supports the MANPAGER environment variable, overriding + PAGER. + + * apropos/whatis output is now truncated to the terminal width by + default. As with man, this may be overridden using the MANWIDTH + environment variable. + + * lexgrog now ignores alleged manual page names containing spaces, + as these usually indicate parsing errors or ill-formed NAME + sections and they clutter up apropos output badly. I'm only aware + of one legitimate counterexample, the Intercal compiler "oo, ick", + which no longer appears to be known by that name anyway; let me + know if there are any others. + + * man now discards stderr from formatting subprocesses when + outputting to a pager, to avoid visual corruption from any error + messages. + + * If the MAN_KEEP_FORMATTING environment variable is set to any + non-empty value, then man will preserve formatting characters in + its output even when standard output is not a terminal. This may + be useful for programs such as pinfo that call man and can + interpret its formatted output. + + * Setting NOCACHE in the configuration file now prevents man from + ever creating cat pages automatically. + + * apropos now accepts the --and option to display only items that + match all the supplied keywords. + +man-db 2.4.4 (12 February 2007) +=============================== + +Major changes since man-db 2.4.3: + + man-db is now revision-controlled using bzr + (https://bazaar.canonical.com/). See docs/HACKING for the location + of the archive (including all CVS history, imported by Canonical). + + Fixes: + ------ + + * SECURITY: Fix a buffer overrun if using -H and the designated web + browser (argument to -H or $BROWSER) contains multiple %s + expansions. This is CVE-2006-4250. + + * Ignore SIGINT and SIGQUIT while running subprocesses, so that + typing Ctrl-C doesn't kill less (broken in 2.4.3). + + * Similarly, ignore SIGPIPE in subprocesses. + + * Various fixes to SIGCHLD handling in pipeline library, preventing + "waitpid failed: No child processes" errors. + + * Skip "exec" in configuration file commands (perhaps left over from + old installations), which the pipeline execution library cannot + handle directly. + + Improvements: + ------------- + + * Add support for Chinese in the --enable-mb-groff case. + + * lexgrog now handles pages with multiple descriptions more + usefully, by displaying one description per output line. + +man-db 2.4.3 (3 July 2005) +========================== + +Major changes since man-db 2.4.2: + + Fixes: + ------ + + * Avoid problems creating databases on systems with badly broken + clocks set before the Unix epoch. + + * Fix detection of decompression programs, so that man doesn't + attempt to execute man pages when it doesn't have a corresponding + decompression program. + + Improvements: + ------------- + + * apropos and whatis now accept a --section option to restrict their + search to a particular manual section. + + * The pipeline execution library is now used for most calls to + external programs, avoiding use of the shell. + + * When stdout is not a terminal, man pages will be formatted in + plain text without the use of backspace or ANSI formatting + characters. + + * When invoking apropos (man -k) or whatis (man -f) as external + programs, man now only passes through command-line options + understood by the respective programs. + + * Improve handling of locales with versions and/or modifiers. + + * Add support for Croatian, Galician, Indonesian, Slovak, and + Turkish pages. + + * man-db may now be built to use Berkeley DB version 4 + (--with-db=db4). + + Compatibility notes: + -------------------- + + * Setting the line length of manual pages now requires groff 1.18 or + later. + +man-db 2.4.2 (20 September 2003) +================================ + +Major changes since man-db 2.4.1: + + Fixes: + ------ + + * SECURITY: Fix a number of buffer overruns in configuration file + handling, ultimate source location, and MANPATH processing. This + is CVE CAN-2003-0620. + + * SECURITY: Restrict the use of the DEFINE directive in ~/.manpath + to code running with dropped privilege. Previously, the + 'compressor' variable could be used to run arbitrary code with + raised privilege. This is CVE CAN-2003-0645. + + * Make sure to initialize mandata structures to zero. The uses of + uninitialized memory resulting from this had been leading to + random segfaults. + + * Drop privileges in order to be able to read pages in + non-world-readable user manpaths while setuid. + + * man can be built with --disable-setuid again. + + * man's locale support has been revamped. The encoding of source + manual pages is no longer related to the encoding of the input + passed to *roff or to *roff's terminal output device. These + frequently differ, especially in UTF-8 locales but in other + circumstances as well, and a "just send 8-bit data" approach is no + longer adequate. If you are using a version of groff with the + Debian multibyte patch applied, pass the --enable-mb-groff option + to configure. + + * When using GDBM, accessdb and apropos did not return database + entries in sorted order, since GDBM's key traversal interface is + not lexicographically ordered. The database layer has been + corrected to cope with this. + + * Directories found in strange places in manual hierarchies don't + crash mandb. + + Improvements: + ------------- + + * man now calls mandb to update databases rather than doing it + itself. This leaves cat pages as the sole remaining reason for man + to be setuid. + + * The "undocumented" message is only displayed if a corresponding + executable is found on the $PATH. + + * All programs that read ~/.manpath now take a -C option to cause + them to read a different user configuration file instead. + + * The --enable-debug option to configure has been removed. man-db's + Makefiles now always calculate full dependencies for C files. + + * mandb caches the contents of directories, significantly speeding + up the purging of obsolete entries. + + * mandb now knows how to purge database entries corresponding to + removed stray cat pages. + + In addition, a pipeline execution library has been written, which + will make it possible to eliminate all or almost all use of the + shell in a future release. Unfortunately, time pressures due to the + security issues above meant that the pipeline library was not well + enough tested for use in this release, so it is present but unused. + That will be the first item for 2.4.3. + +man-db 2.4.1 (22 December 2002) +=============================== + +Major changes since man-db 2.4.0: + + The man-db CVS repository has moved from sourceforge.net to + savannah.nongnu.org. + + Fixes: + ------ + + * Don't enter an infinite loop when the SYSTEM environment variable + is set. + + * man doesn't segfault when trying to follow a broken symlink. + + * mandb no longer corrupts databases when deleting entries that are + part of multi keys. + + * Prevent a possible buffer overflow when encountering large multi + keys. + + * Man page names are escaped when globbing, so [(1) can now be found + even if the database is not up to date. + + * Correct an access() check that led to 'man -X -l -' producing no + output. + + * lexgrog can now cope with man pages containing only a .so link. + + * Manual hierarchies with a specific encoding are put into the + search path in the correct order. A bug in $LANGUAGE handling had + formerly meant that 'de' would take precedence over 'de_DE.UTF-8'. + + Improvements: + ------------- + + * man's behaviour when searching for page names that begin with a + digit has been made more intuitive, as has its treatment of + section names that are extensions of ones mentioned in the + configuration file but are not themselves explicitly named as + sections. + + * The default line length for pages formatted for terminal output + has been increased (reducing margin size) to match the default in + groff 1.18. + + * Proofread the manual. + + * The -w flag to man has been changed to display the name of only + the source nroff file. A -W flag has been introduced which + displays the name of the cat file as well. If both flags are given + to man, it will behave as before. + + * If bzip2 is installed, pages compressed with bzip2 can now be + displayed. + + * Add support for displaying an additional message when no man page + is found, which can be used to direct users to a generic + "undocumented" page. + + * The manual hierarchy layout will now be guessed where possible if + an explicit --enable-mandirs argument is not passed to configure. + +man-db 2.4.0 (26 June 2002) +=========================== + +Major changes since man_db-2.3.20: + + I have changed the package name to man-db, as the underscore was + awkward. + + Upgrading from version 2.3.x: + ----------------------------- + + The database format has changed slightly, so you will need to run + 'mandb --create' after installing the new version to rebuild your + databases from scratch. (Distribution packages should do this + automatically for system databases.) + + Fixes: + ------ + + * The GNU nroff test in configure now works when /bin/sh is ash. + + * When scanning pages for NAME sections, lexgrog and mandb no longer + accidentally eat the line after each occurrence of the no-op + request '.'. + + * 'man --local' drops privileges throughout to avoid problems with + non-world-readable home directories. + + * Newly created cat directories are chowned to the man user when + running as root. + + * 'man --html' no longer creates its temporary file with raised + privileges, so that it now works with a setuid man. + + * man detects preprocessors correctly when setuid. + + * Various segfault fixes: explicitly null-terminate data returned by + the Berkeley DB library to avoid some rare crashes; don't reuse a + freed pointer in some cases of pages with multiple names; handle + MANPATHs containing '::' more safely. + + * Correctly parse manual pages using DOS line-ending conventions. + + * Work around a misfeature in Berkeley DB: it pauses for several + seconds if asked to read a zero-length database, on the assumption + that somebody is still writing the metadata page. man is generally + better off just ignoring the database in this case. + + * Work around corrupted databases in the case where the nextkey + pointer chain contains a loop. + + Improvements: + ------------- + + * man looks in the filesystem followed by the database, rather than + the other way round. Unix filesystems are quite good databases for + this purpose, and the man database is only superior when looking + up names that don't have associated links in the filesystem. + + * 'apropos --wildcard --exact' makes sure wildcards match an entire + description or page name, unlike 'apropos --wildcard' which may + match on word boundaries too. + + * man's page-searching code has been substantially rearranged, and + now only starts displaying pages when it has finished searching + for candidates. This allows pages to be sorted more sensibly. + + * Manual pages are formatted in UTF-8 if that is the current + locale's character set. The -E option is now available to force a + particular encoding. Note that some versions of (e.g.) less have + problems displaying UTF-8 in conjunction with backspace + characters; groff 1.18 should alleviate this by using ANSI colour + escapes instead. + + * The less prompt string sets -PM as well as -Pm. + + * Invoking man from within less now sets the correct page title in + the inner less. + + * Unless the --match-case option is used, man will search for pages + case-insensitively. + + * Update the mechanism for setting the line length so that it also + works with groff 1.18. + + * The -R switch is added to the less prompt string, which is needed + to display the ANSI colour escapes generated by groff 1.18 + correctly. + + * The $MANLESS environment variable may be used to override the + normal creation of the less prompt string. + + * Translation updates for French, German, and Spanish, and a new + Catalan translation. See man/THANKS. + +man_db-2.3.20 (7 September 2001) +================================ + +Major changes since man_db-2.3.19: + + Fixes: + ------ + + * A typo in 2.3.19 caused character sets for many languages to be + detected incorrectly. This especially affected multibyte + languages. + + * Long options in the environment variable LESS are handled + correctly. + + * When checking if cat pages need to be updated, check for different + timestamps rather than whether the cat page is newer, as otherwise + we were confused by tools like tar that preserve timestamps in + their archives. Each cat page is now set to have the same mtime as + its corresponding man page. + + * Look up the correct character set each time a page is displayed + rather than just the first time, in case pages in several + different character sets are viewed in a single session. + + * groff requests are no longer assumed to be case-insensitive when + scanning for preprocessors, so for example mdoc's .Eq request + isn't mistaken for the .EQ which introduces eqn commands. + + * Escape arguments passed to the shell that might contain dangerous + characters. + + * Avoid an infinite loop if the LANGUAGE environment variable is set + but empty. + + * The --create option to mandb now implies --no-purge. + + * Temporary files are handled with more secure permissions. + + Improvements: + ------------- + + * Use a variant of mkstemp() rather than tempnam(), to avoid classic + race conditions. (I don't believe the races were usefully + exploitable.) + + * Tolerate whatis entries in a database that point to themselves. + + * Detect more translations of the NAME section. + + * Add examples of man pages written in POD and SGML. + + * lexgrog is now installed in /usr/bin by default, with proper + argument parsing, an improved output format, and a man page. It is + expected to be used by programs that need to validate man pages. + + * The -H (--html) option to man is now compiled in by default, and + supports the BROWSER specification (as documented at + http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/BROWSER/ and amended at + https://www.dwheeler.com/browse/secure_browser.html). + +man_db-2.3.19 (5 July 2001) +=========================== + +Major changes since man_db-2.3.18: + + Fixes: + ------ + + * The user configuration file ~/.manpath is no longer trusted when + deciding whether to drop privileges. In the process, user cat + directory handling has been improved. + + * Commands of the form 'man -S "" foo' formerly emptied the list of + acceptable sections and then searched the database anyway, and + commands of the form 'man -S ::: foo' segfaulted. Both now use the + standard list of sections. + + * The HUP and TERM signals are now handled better. + + * straycats processing invokes 'col -bx' rather than 'col-bx'. + + * The root user is now correctly allowed to update databases in + system manpaths. + + * apropos and whatis no longer enter infinite recursion if a + database contains an entry pointing to itself. + + Improvements: + ------------- + + * When compiled with --enable-setuid, man and mandb can be installed + non-setuid. In this mode, they will be unable to write cat pages + in system directories or to modify system databases, but will + otherwise operate correctly. This allows a single binary package + to support setuid and non-setuid modes of operation. + + * The ordering of manual sections is read from SECTION directives in + the configuration file rather than being hard-coded. + + * The MANDB_MAP configuration file directive is documented more + clearly. + + * Multiple whatis entries separated by commas, break requests, + and/or paragraph requests are handled more intelligently. + + * Fill control requests (.nf and .fi) cause lexgrog to assume a + break at each newline. + + * Duplicate manpath entries (often generated in the course of + national language support) are removed, so that 'man -a' works + better. + + * man_db's binaries are installed unstripped by default. + + * Since supporting certain layouts of manual page hierarchies causes + problems for others, the layout is now selectable via configure. + The default is to try all layouts. + + * man only does an on-the-fly update of the database caches when the + --update option is given. + + * Manual pages are displayed with a line length appropriate to the + current terminal. If a non-standard line length is used (i.e. the + terminal is not between 66 and 80 characters wide) then cat pages + will not be saved. + + * mandb tries to purge obsolete entries from its databases. Using + the --create flag should now usually only be necessary in cases of + database corruption. + +man_db-2.3.18 (14 May 2001) +=========================== + +Major changes since man_db-2.3.11: + + man_db-2.3.18 is an interim release under new maintenance by Colin + Watson, merging much of the work done by former maintainers (Graeme + Wilford and Fabrizio Polacco). It incorporates several years of + changes made in the Debian GNU/Linux distribution's package of + man_db. + + Here are a few highlights, with the names of the maintainers + responsible for them. As I am documenting after the fact of other + people's changes of a few years ago, I have undoubtedly missed a + number of fixes and improvements; I promise to keep track of these + as I go along in future. + + Fixes: + ------ + + * Multiple security fixes, including better handling of temporary + files, a format string vulnerability fix, and more careful + dropping of privileges when running setuid. [Fabrizio, Colin] + + * Databases no longer disappear temporarily while they are being + regenerated. [Fabrizio] + + * Corrected handling of locale environment variables. Setting + several colon-separated locales in $LANGUAGE also works now. + [Colin] + + * whatis and apropos are more careful about the possibility of a + corrupted database. [Fabrizio, Colin] + + Improvements: + ------------- + + * If root has private manual hierarchies, cat pages generated from + them are no longer chowned to a less-privileged user. [Wilf] + + * Rewrote configuration file handling, adding DEFINE directives to + set paths to external programs. The configuration file is now + called man_db.conf. [Wilf] + + * Support FHS paths (/usr/share/man and /var/cache/man) in + preference to FSSTND paths (/usr/man and /var/catman). [Fabrizio] + + * Converted from catgets to GNU gettext for national language + support. [Fabrizio, Colin] + + * Several new and improved localized message catalogues and + translated man pages. [Fabrizio, Colin, other contributors] + + * Added accessdb utility, which displays the contents of a manual + page database. [Fabrizio] + + * Added user configuration file ~/.manpath, with the same syntax as + the global configuration file. [Fabrizio] + + * Leading or trailing colons in the MANPATH environment variable + cause the manpath derived from configuration files to be prepended + or appended respectively. A double colon in the middle of the + environment variable causes the configuration file manpath to be + inserted between the colons. [Fabrizio] + + * Added experimental -H and -Thtml options to take advantage of + groff's new HTML driver. [Fabrizio] + + * lexgrog now scans manual pages to guess which preprocessors are + needed. [Fabrizio] + + * Create cat directories on the fly if necessary. [Fabrizio] + + * Supply a wrapper which explicitly drops privileges to uid man if + man or mandb is run as root. In the future, splitting out setuid + functions into a separate helper process may remove the need for + this paranoia. [Fabrizio] + + * Add --test option to mandb, which merely reports errors in manual + page hierarchies rather than actually creating or updating a + database. [Fabrizio, Colin] + + * Manual pages may now be symlinks outside the mantree. This should + pose no significant security concerns, and utilities such as GNU + stow create such symlinks. [Colin] + + * Deprecate whatis references for man, and display a warning if + displaying a page relies on going through a whatis reference. They + often lead to confusingly non-obviously-deterministic behaviour, + and guaranteeing that man will honour them even when the database + is out of date causes performance problems. [Colin] + +man_db-2.3.11 (21 September 1995) +================================= + +Major changes since man_db-2.3.10: + + * The man_db manual is bundled in source form. + + * Components of $PATH not in the config file were checked for + `man' subdirectories. Now they are also checked for `../man'. + + * Untarring a new manual page (with a timestamp older than the + relative cat file) over the original did *not* cause man/catman + to reformat the replacement. This is changed. As a side effect, + untarring an unchanged man file over the original will also cause + a reformat. + +man_db-2.3.10 (13 July 1995) +============================ + +Major changes since man_db-2.3.5: + + Fixes: + ------ + + * Global databases were not owned by setuid owner (if applicable). + As a consequence only mandb could update the databases unless + man was run by superuser. Stupid bug. + + * The keyword passed to apropos _never_ matched the first word + of any whatis line. + + * FAVOUR_STRAYCATS code (if enabled), did not work properly. + + * zsoelim did not work as advertised. + + Improvements: + ------------- + + * Man removes its temporary files upon abnormal termination. + + * apropos does proper word matching rather than the fuzzy + matching of 2.3.5. eg. supplying any of the keywords: + `ld.so', `a.out', `dynamic', `linker' or `loader' will match + the following entry: + + ld.so (8) - a.out dynamic linker/loader + + whereas `a.out' and `loader' used to fail. + + * man/whatis/apropos return with exit code 16 if manual + page/file or keyword is not matched. Previously exit code 0 + was used making it difficult for callers to know if the lookup + was successful. + + * addition of German message catalogue. + + * `apropos' and `man -k' do POSIX specified regex matching rather + than keyword searches if the environment variable POSIXLY_CORRECT + is defined. + + * added glob-only support of native system manual hierarchies + on HP-UX, OSF and Solaris operating systems. Improved the + whatis parsing code to cope with majority of HP-UX manual pages. + + * ported to NeXTstep. + +man_db-2.3.5 (21 April 1995) +============================ + +Major changes since man_db-2.2.1: + + Added support for... + -------------------- + + * Non-standard section names i.e. multi-character + + * Compressed manual pages. + A new utility `zsoelim' is included to correctly handle nroff + .so requests that point to a file which has been compressed. + + * Compressed stray cats. + By definition, stray cats are not re-creatable as they have no + relative source manual page. As they may have non-default + compression extensions and may reside on read-only media, + stray cats have the same compression support as manual pages. + + * FSSTND proposed `extension' support. + Specific package manual pages may be installed in the standard + sections but with a package-unique extension appended as in + exit(3tcl) - ../man/man3/exit.3tcl. Using the command + + `man -e tcl exit' + + would then display an exit manual page with a tcl extension, if + available. Of course, `man 3tcl exit' works as always. + + * FSSTND proposed NLS man subdirectories. + Of the form .../man/<locale>/man<sec>/ + + * NLS message catalogue hooks. + Provision has been made for the programs to emit their messages in + a language dependent form. + + * `whatis' referred manual pages. + Some manual pages contain relevant information for commands or + programs that would not otherwise reference the page. + The `whatis' part of the manual page is used to create virtual + links to these pages by all of the names mentioned within it. + Examples include names such as `.' and `:' referencing the local + shell manual page. + + * Catman utility. + Used to pre-format the manual pages into cat pages. + + * Operating systems other than Linux. + man_db has been reported to compile on the following platforms: + + Linux, SunOS, Solaris, Ultrix, OSF, HP-UX, AIX, IRIX + + (although portability does not extend to support of native + manual tree structures on some of these systems, eg. HP-UX) + + * Berkeley DB library routines. + This compliments the support of both gdbm and ndbm which already + existed. DB databases may be shared across platforms. + + * $MANOPTS environment variable. + The environment variable MANOPTS may be set to any string in + command line option/argument format. It is parsed by man(1) prior + to its actual command line. + + * Per manual hierarchy cat directory locations. + It is possible to redirect your cat pages to other directories or + even other file systems. + + * Per manual hierarchy nroff/[tg]roff format scripts. + Ability to create custom formatter scripts that are called by + man(1) to enable format/display of non-standard manual pages or + manual pages requiring a special macro package. + + * Extension of `man -l'. + Arguments following -l are interpreted as local files requiring + format and display. Extensions are: + + `man -l -' formats and displays stdin. + `man -l foo.1.gz' decompresses, formats and displays foo.1.gz. + + * Latin1 manual pages/choice of nroff output device. + + * Viewing of ASCII manual pages formatted for a latin1 output device + on a 7 bit ASCII terminal (-7). + + * Whatis and apropos utilities support regex and wildcard matching. + + * checkman. + Shell script utility that will find and display duplicated manual + pages found across manual page hierarchies. + + * mkcatdirs. + Shell script utility to create appropriate cat directories after + installation and setup. + + Conceptual improvements + ----------------------- + + * Replacement of single database with multiple modular db's. + Easier integration of additional information into the databases in + the future. + + * Both user and global databases share the same name: + + `index.<db-type>' + + where <db-type> could be `bt', `db' or `pag' and `dir'. + + * Databases contain `whatis' text. + Makewhatis and text whatis databases are redundant, although + whatis and apropos will use the text whatis database for information + if they cannot read from a relevant index database. + + * straycats handled without need for `placeholders'. + + * Friendly less(1) prompt. + If man(1) uses less(1) as its pager (dependent on both static and + dynamic factors), the prompt is modified to suit the manual page + being displayed. The modification performed is also changeable by + the user. + + * man_db manual. + man_db has a manual that covers the setup, maintenance and use of + a generic online manual page system. + + * Modes of operation. + The man_db utilities can be compiled with various modes of + operation in mind. Eg. man can be stopped from updating databases + and/or creating cat files in situations where security is extremely + important. See the man_db manual for details. + + Speed improvements + ------------------ + + * Background compression/saving of cat files. + Cat files are compressed and saved in the background, whilst the + user is able to browse the formatted page directly. + + * Merge of straycats and makewhatis into mandb. + While mandb has slowed, it now incorporates makewhatis and straycats + functionality and is much faster as a whole. 2.0a2 used grep/awk, + 2.2 used C regex and 2.3 now uses lex sourced C to strip out the + whatis information from the raw man or cat files. + + * Berkeley DB support. + Provides lower database initialisation overhead as compared with + gdbm. + + * Extremely fast whatis(1) searches. + whatis(1) uses keyed database lookups to retrieve whatis strings + for standard (non regex/wildcard) searches. + + Fixes + ----- + + * Correct handling of $MANSECT. + The environment variable MANSECT is no longer ignored. + + * Acknowledgement of $MANPATH order. + manpath elements are searched in the order specified. |