"texdoc --help" says: The command `texdoc texdoc' gives you the full user guide in pdf. Doing so, however, gives texdoc info: texdoc aliased to texdoc/texdoc Sorry, no documentation found for texdoc/texdoc. The alias comes from /usr/share/texmf/texdoc/texdoc.cnf and is annotated with the comment "avoid the man page to be displayed first". It looks like neither the pdf documentation nor the man page for texdoc were installed, and this despite me having texlive-documentation-{base,english} installed. I still haven't completely understood how the texlive packages on the gentoo mirrors came to pass, but this archive here seems to contain the required files: http://ctan.org/get/systems/texlive/tlnet/2008/archive/bin-texdoc.doc.tar.lzma Do you move them over to the Gentoo mirrors and include in a revbumped texlive-core or texlive-documentation-* package?
fixed now; i had forgot the .src and .doc tarballs for tl-core. note that you'll need the doc useflag on tl-core to get the file.
