dh_installman(1) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | FILES | OPTIONS | EXAMPLES | NOTES | SEE ALSO | AUTHOR | COLOPHON

DH_INSTALLMAN(1)                Debhelper               DH_INSTALLMAN(1)

NAME         top

       dh_installman - install man pages into package build directories

SYNOPSIS         top

       dh_installman [debhelper options] [manpage ...]

DESCRIPTION         top

       dh_installman is a debhelper program that handles installing man
       pages into the correct locations in package build directories.

       In compat 10 and earlier, this program was primarily for when
       upstream's build system does not properly install them as a part
       of its install step (or it does not have an install step).  In
       compat 11 and later, it also supports the default searchdir plus
       --sourcedir like dh_install(1) and has the advantage that it
       respects the nodoc build profile (unlike dh_install(1)).

       Even if you prefer to use dh_install(1) for installing the
       manpages, dh_installman can still be useful for converting the
       manpage encoding to UTF-8 and for converting .so links (as
       described below).  However, that part happens automatically
       without any explicit configuration.

       You tell dh_installman what man pages go in your packages, and it
       figures out where to install them based on the section field in
       their .TH or .Dt line. If you have a properly formatted .TH or
       .Dt line, your man page will be installed into the right
       directory, with the right name (this includes proper handling of
       pages with a subsection, like 3perl, which are placed in man3,
       and given an extension of .3perl). If your .TH or .Dt line is
       incorrect or missing, the program may guess wrong based on the
       file extension.

       It also supports translated man pages, by looking for extensions
       like .ll.8 and .ll_LL.8, or by use of the --language switch.

       If dh_installman seems to install a man page into the wrong
       section or with the wrong extension, this is because the man page
       has the wrong section listed in its .TH or .Dt line. Edit the man
       page and correct the section, and dh_installman will follow suit.
       See man(7) for details about the .TH section, and mdoc(7) for the
       .Dt section. If dh_installman seems to install a man page into a
       directory like /usr/share/man/pl/man1/, that is because your
       program has a name like foo.pl, and dh_installman assumes that
       means it is translated into Polish. Use --language=C to avoid
       this.

       After the man page installation step, dh_installman will check to
       see if any of the man pages in the temporary directories of any
       of the packages it is acting on contain .so links. If so, it
       changes them to symlinks.

       Also, dh_installman will use man to guess the character encoding
       of each manual page and convert it to UTF-8. If the guesswork
       fails for some reason, you can override it using an encoding
       declaration. See manconv(1) for details.

       From debhelper compatibility level 11 on, dh_install will fall
       back to looking in debian/tmp for files, if it does not find them
       in the current directory (or wherever you've told it to look
       using --sourcedir).

FILES         top

       debian/package.manpages
           Lists man pages to be installed.

           Supports substitution variables in compat 13 and later as
           documented in debhelper(7).

OPTIONS         top

       -A, --all
           Install all files specified by command line parameters in ALL
           packages acted on.

       --language=ll
           Use this to specify that the man pages being acted on are
           written in the specified language.

       --sourcedir=dir
           Look in the specified directory for files to be installed.
           This option requires compat 11 or later (it is silently
           ignored in compat 10 or earlier).

           Note that this is not the same as the --sourcedirectory
           option used by the dh_auto_* commands. You rarely need to use
           this option, since dh_installman automatically looks for
           files in debian/tmp in debhelper compatibility level 11 and
           above.

       manpage ...
           Install these man pages into the first package acted on. (Or
           in all packages if -A is specified).

EXAMPLES         top

       An example debian/package.manpages file could look like this:

         doc/man/foo.1
         # Translations
         doc/man/foo.da.1
         doc/man/foo.de.1
         doc/man/foo.fr.1
         # NB: The following line is considered a polish translation
         # of "foo.1" (and not a manpage written in perl called "foo.pl")
         doc/man/foo.pl.1
         # ...

NOTES         top

       An older version of this program, dh_installmanpages(1), is still
       used by some packages, and so is still included in debhelper.  It
       is, however, deprecated, due to its counterintuitive and
       inconsistent interface. Use this program instead.

SEE ALSO         top

       debhelper(7)

       This program is a part of debhelper.

AUTHOR         top

       Joey Hess <[email protected]>

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the debhelper (helper programs for
       debian/rules) project.  Information about the project can be
       found at [unknown -- if you know, please contact man-
       [email protected]] If you have a bug report for this manual page,
       send it to [email protected].  This page was obtained from
       the project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨https://salsa.debian.org/debian/debhelper.git⟩ on 2024-06-14.
       (At that time, the date of the most recent commit that was found
       in the repository was 2024-06-09.)  If you discover any rendering
       problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there
       is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
       corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
       (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       [email protected]

13.15.3                        2024-06-07               DH_INSTALLMAN(1)

Pages that refer to this page: dh_installmanpages(1)debhelper(7)