Is it possible to officially switch from man to man-db? There are several problems with unicode in showing man messages (not man pages), and there is not any bug for man-db. It is also used by most of other distributions. If it is not possible is there a reason? man-db is working well for me, and works well with utf-8. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce:
emerge --info Portage 2.1.6.13 (default/linux/amd64/2008.0, gcc-4.3.2, glibc-2.9_p20081201-r2, 2.6.30-gentoo-r6-zizo x86_64) ================================================================= System uname: Linux-2.6.30-gentoo-r6-zizo-x86_64-Intel-R-_Pentium-R-_4_CPU_3.00GHz-with-gentoo-2.0.1 Timestamp of tree: Sun, 13 Sep 2009 17:00:01 +0000 ccache version 2.4 [disabled] app-shells/bash: 4.0_p28 dev-lang/python: 2.6.2-r1 dev-util/ccache: 2.4-r7 dev-util/cmake: 2.6.4 sys-apps/baselayout: 2.0.1 sys-apps/openrc: 0.4.3-r3 sys-apps/sandbox: 1.6-r2 sys-devel/autoconf: 2.63-r1 sys-devel/automake: 1.7.9-r1, 1.9.6-r2, 1.10.2 sys-devel/binutils: 2.18-r3 sys-devel/gcc-config: 1.4.1 sys-devel/libtool: 1.5.26 virtual/os-headers: 2.6.27-r2 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="amd64" CBUILD="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu" CFLAGS="-march=native -mtune=native -O2 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer" CHOST="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/kde/3.5/env /usr/kde/3.5/share/config /usr/kde/3.5/shutdown /usr/share/config" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/ca-certificates.conf /etc/env.d /etc/fonts/fonts.conf /etc/gconf /etc/gentoo-release /etc/revdep-rebuild /etc/sandbox.d /etc/splash /etc/terminfo /etc/udev/rules.d" CXXFLAGS="-march=native -mtune=native -O2 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS="" FEATURES="distlocks fixpackages parallel-fetch protect-owned sandbox sfperms strict unmerge-orphans userfetch" GENTOO_MIRRORS="ftp://mirror.switch.ch/mirror/gentoo/ http://gentoo.inode.at/" LANG="it_IT.UTF-8" LC_ALL="it_IT.UTF-8" LDFLAGS="-Wl,-O1" LINGUAS="it" MAKEOPTS="-j2" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_CONFIGROOT="/" PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS="--exclude=/lost+found" PORTAGE_RSYNC_OPTS="--recursive --links --safe-links --perms --times --compress --force --whole-file --delete --stats --timeout=180 --exclude=/distfiles --exclude=/local --exclude=/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/portage/local" SYNC="rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" USE="X acl acpi alsa amd64 bash-completion berkdb bluetooth branding bzip2 cairo cli cracklib crypt cups dbus dri fortran gdbm gif gpm gtk hal iconv isdnlog jpeg kde mmx mudflap multilib ncurses nls nptl nptlonly opengl openmp pam pcre perl png pppd python qt4 readline reflection session spl sse sse2 ssl sysfs tcpd tiff truetype unicode usb v4l v4l2 xcomposite xorg zlib" ALSA_CARDS="intel8x0" ALSA_PCM_PLUGINS="adpcm alaw asym copy dmix dshare dsnoop empty extplug file hooks iec958 ioplug ladspa lfloat linear meter mmap_emul mulaw multi null plug rate route share shm softvol" ELIBC="glibc" INPUT_DEVICES="keyboard mouse" KERNEL="linux" LINGUAS="it" USERLAND="GNU" VIDEO_CARDS="nvidia" Unset: CPPFLAGS, CTARGET, FFLAGS, INSTALL_MASK, PORTAGE_COMPRESS, PORTAGE_COMPRESS_FLAGS
On a semi-related note: man-db 2.5.6 was released on 28.08.2009.
Sorry for my 5 cents, I just wanted to create the same ticket but found this one. There are some bugs like this one: http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=93664 That bug was not fixed for 4+ years. Contacting the maintainer (Federico Lucifredi) didn't help. He does nothing on this. If you look on the homepage (http://primates.ximian.com/~flucifredi/man/), you gonna see it's already died. Last release was on 2007-12-31. Noone considers tons of bugs related to it's unicode support. On the other hand there's man-db which is actively developed and is mainstream on other distros. I remember I used mandb package on my last "distro" which was LFS for several years without no problems. It's very curious for me that man-db is masked as unstable on Gentoo. The reasonable question is "why?"
Please visit bug 289884, the reason for man-db still being in testing is there. I think we're very close to resolving man-db issue soon.
*** Bug 349385 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
bug 289884 is solved as of 2012-10-28. Are there any other issue to avoid switching to man-db?
Probably bug 447944
It seems, that bug 447944 is fixed. Bug 244517 is issue only for BSD systems, so, can we proceed?
I've used man-db for three or four years now, and it's solid. The maintainer, Colin Watson, has quickly fixed a couple of pretty trivial bugs I've turned up in that time. Effectively, it's entirely stable on x86. Will
I have solved man's grave Unicode problems thanks to man-db. I'm wholeheartedly for its replacing good ol' man.
Who can decide to proceed this migration?
the man package is installed via virtual/man. that means once we change the order, no one will migrate automatically. people have to manually: emerge -C man emerge man-db but before we can make that change, we have to make sure stage building works. filed bug 467458 to track. once that is closed, we can make the switch.
I'm having trouble with emerging net-misc/x2goserver because it has an RDEPEND on sys-apps/man, which is blocked by sys-apps/man-db. When I try to substitute virtual/man in the x2goserver ebuild, I end up with build errors about 'man2html' not being found. So, it seems sys-apps/man-db doesn't provide an equivalent tool? There's also a 'man2dvi' in sys-apps/man that's not in sys-apps/man-db.
Sorry, it's a DEPEND, not RDEPEND.
man2html or man2dvi are indeed not provided directly, and I don't plan to do so in man-db. man2html is IMO better handled separately (there's a man2html package at least in Debian; tools based on things like w3mman, such as that used on manpages.ubuntu.com, can do a better job for mass runs; for single pages 'man -H' is typically adequate). man2dvi is a trivial script that amounts to 'man -Tdvi'.
Following up on the use of 'man -H' for single pages - or 'man -Thtml' if you just want to save the output rather than starting a browser.
Created attachment 349118 [details, diff] sys-apps/man italian fix for utf-8 Service post: I was used to apply this patch to sys-apps/man for fixing Italian language. If someone needs it maybe it still working and can be adapted to other languages.
Comment on attachment 349118 [details, diff] sys-apps/man italian fix for utf-8 this really has nothing to do with this bug. you would normally file a new bug rather than attach to a random one.
Looks like it was replaced finally