OpenBSD: why can't I install man pages locally?

[jkeenan]

I am trying to determine why, when I am building perl in a git checkout and installing it locally, I get man pages installed on Linux and FreeBSD but not on OpenBSD.

Linux (Ubuntu Linux 24.04 LTS)

$ sh ./Configure -des -Dusedevel -Dprefix=/tmp/alpha && make install
...
$ ls -l /tmp/alpha/
total 12
drwxr-xr-x 2 jkeenan jkeenan 4096 May 15 16:52 bin
drwxr-xr-x 3 jkeenan jkeenan 4096 May 15 16:52 lib
drwxr-xr-x 4 jkeenan jkeenan 4096 May 15 16:53 man

$ ls -l /tmp/alpha/man/man1 | wc -l
265

$ ls -l /tmp/alpha/man/man3 | wc -l
702

FreeBSD-14

$ sh ./Configure -des -Dusedevel -Dprefix=/tmp/alpha && make install
...
$ ls -l /tmp/alpha/
total 10
drwxr-xr-x  2 jkeenan wheel 32 May 15 20:54 bin
drwxr-xr-x  3 jkeenan wheel  3 May 15 20:54 lib
drwxr-xr-x  4 jkeenan wheel  4 May 15 20:54 man

$ ls -l /tmp/alpha/man
total 33
drwxr-xr-x  2 jkeenan wheel 266 May 15 20:54 man1
drwxr-xr-x  2 jkeenan wheel 706 May 15 20:54 man3

$ ls -l /tmp/alpha/man/man1 | wc -l
     265

$ ls -l /tmp/alpha/man/man3 | wc -l
     705

OpenBSD-6.9

$ sh ./Configure -des -Dusedevel -Dprefix=/tmp/alpha && make install
...
  /tmp/alpha/lib/perl5/5.41.13/pod/perltoot.pod
./perl -Ilib -I. installman --destdir= 
Manual page installation was disabled by Configure

$ ls -l /tmp/alpha/   
total 8
drwxr-xr-x  2 jkeenan  wheel  1024 May 15 21:02 bin
drwxr-xr-x  3 jkeenan  wheel   512 May 15 21:02 lib

I cannot figure out why Configure is disabling man page installation when I have not passed it options like -Dman1dir=none -Dman3dir=none. Suggestions?

[jkeenan]

@afresh1 @tonycoz @Tux ^^

[afresh1]

My Configure agrees

System manual is in /usr/share/man/man1.

Perl5 has manual pages available in source form.
However, you don't have nroff, so they're probably useless to you.
If you don't want the manual sources installed, answer 'none'.
 
Where do the main Perl5 manual pages (source) go? (~name ok) [none]  

This clues us in a bit:

$ which nroff
which: nroff: Command not found.

In the base system, we fix this in config.over.

Of note, OpenBSD uses mandoc(1) from mandoc.bsd.lv as our manpage formatter.

[Leont]

My Configure agrees

System manual is in /usr/share/man/man1.

Perl5 has manual pages available in source form.
However, you don't have nroff, so they're probably useless to you.
If you don't want the manual sources installed, answer 'none'.
 
Where do the main Perl5 manual pages (source) go? (~name ok) [none]  

This clues us in a bit:

$ which nroff
which: nroff: Command not found.

In the base system, we fix this in config.over.

Of note, OpenBSD uses mandoc(1) from mandoc.bsd.lv as our manpage formatter.

I suspect something like -Dnroff=mandoc would make things work more smoothly.

[jkeenan]

I suspect something like -Dnroff=mandoc would make things work more smoothly.

Close, but unfortunately no cigar.

With this configuration (at (v5.41.13 (v5.41.12-69-g482fd30fb2))):

$ sh ./Configure -des -Dusedevel -Dprefix=/tmp/beta -Dnroff=mandoc

... (which would have been better if it also had -Uversiononly), I did get man/man1 and man/man3 subdirectories populated.

$ ls /tmp/beta/man/man1 | wc -l                    
     264
$ ls /tmp/beta/man/man3 | wc -l 
     703

... but the non-ASCII characters were still elusive.

$ man /tmp/beta/man/man1/perlhist.1 | grep var
       "BinGOs" Williams, Zefram, AEvar Arnfjordh Bjarmason, Stevan Little,
       David Croy.  We had passed around various names (baton, token, hot
        AEvar     5.13.10       2011-Feb-20

$ man /tmp/beta/man/man1/perlcn.1 | head           
PERLCN(1)              Perl Programmers Reference Guide              PERLCN(1)




NAME
       perlcn - <?><?><?><?> Perl <?><?>

DESCRIPTION
       <?><?><?><?> Perl <?><?><?>!

[Leont]

... but the non-ASCII characters were still elusive.

What does your locale look like? Are you accidentally using a iso-8859-1 locale?

If you are using a utf8 locale: What do file /tmp/beta/man/man1/perlcn.1 and md5sum /tmp/beta/man/man1/perlcn.1 return? And the same for perlhist I suppose.

[jkeenan]

What does your locale look like? Are you accidentally using a iso-8859-1 locale?

$ ./bin/perl5.41.13  -V | grep -i locale                                                    
    ccflags ='-DNO_LOCALE_NUMERIC -DNO_LOCALE_COLLATE -DNO_LOCALE_MONETARY -DNO_LOCALE_TIME -DNO_LOCALE_MESSAGES -DLIBC_HANDLES_MISMATCHED_CTYPE -fno-strict-aliasing -pipe -fstack-protector-strong -I/usr/local/include'
    cppflags='-DNO_LOCALE_NUMERIC -DNO_LOCALE_COLLATE -DNO_LOCALE_MONETARY -DNO_LOCALE_TIME -DNO_LOCALE_MESSAGES -DLIBC_HANDLES_MISMATCHED_CTYPE -fno-strict-aliasing -pipe -fstack-protector-strong -I/usr/local/include'
    USE_LOCALE
    USE_LOCALE_CTYPE

If you are using a utf8 locale: What do file /tmp/beta/man/man1/perlcn.1 and md5sum /tmp/beta/man/man1/perlcn.1 return? And the same for perlhist I suppose.

$ perl -V:d_setlocale                                                         
d_setlocale='define';
$ file /tmp/beta/man/man1/perlcn.1
/tmp/beta/man/man1/perlcn.1: troff or preprocessor input text
$ file /tmp/beta/man/man1/perlhist.1
/tmp/beta/man/man1/perlhist.1: troff or preprocessor input text
$ md5sum /tmp/beta/man/man1/perlcn.1 
ksh: md5sum: not found

[Leont]

What does your locale look like? Are you accidentally using a iso-8859-1 locale?

what does the locale command say?

[jkeenan]

What does your locale look like? Are you accidentally using a iso-8859-1 locale?

what does the locale command say?

[openbsd69: ~] $ locale
LANG=
LC_COLLATE="C"
LC_CTYPE="C"
LC_MONETARY="C"
LC_NUMERIC="C"
LC_TIME="C"
LC_MESSAGES="C"
LC_ALL=

[Leont]

Yeah that explains why you couldn't see perlcn, that's not a UTF8 locale. That's no a perl problem.