https://github.com/sio/man
View Debian manpages without installing corresponding packages
https://github.com/sio/man
Last synced: 24 days ago
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View Debian manpages without installing corresponding packages
- Host: GitHub
- URL: https://github.com/sio/man
- Owner: sio
- License: apache-2.0
- Created: 2024-05-17T08:47:16.000Z (12 months ago)
- Default Branch: master
- Last Pushed: 2024-05-28T09:41:46.000Z (11 months ago)
- Last Synced: 2025-02-11T20:49:53.940Z (3 months ago)
- Language: Go
- Homepage:
- Size: 23.4 KB
- Stars: 0
- Watchers: 1
- Forks: 0
- Open Issues: 0
-
Metadata Files:
- Readme: README.md
- License: LICENSE
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README
# Terminal client for manpages.debian.org
This tool allows to view Debian manpages in your terminal without installing
the corresponding packages (and even without installing Debian).
```
usage: man [SECTION] MANPAGE
Examples:
man man
man 2 flock
man bookworm/ddrescue
```
Dependencies:
- groff (from `groff-base` in Debian)
- less (or any other pager, will fall back to `cat` if nothing else found)
All manpages are published and maintained by Debian project.
This is just a simple client for
## Installation
- Build and install with Go: `go install github.com/sio/man/cmd/man@latest`
- Prebuilt binaries are also available in [GitHub Releases](https://github.com/sio/man/releases).
The build process is reproducible.
Use your own judgement to decide whether to trust the binaries publshed there.
## Using this tool to complement OS provided manpages
Replace `man` in your shell with the following function:
```bash
man() {
command man "$@" || /path/to/this/man "$@"
}
```
## License and copyright
Copyright 2024 Vitaly Potyarkin
```
Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
You may obtain a copy of the License at
http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
limitations under the License.
```
## Bugs and possible improvements
- Some manpages are not rendered correctly (try `groff_man`). This may or may
not turn out to be an [upstream] bug. Needs further investigation.
- Relative include directives do not work.
Try `ash`:
- Almost 5MB is a rather large size for this simple tool.
It may have even been just a single pipe of `curl | groff | less`.
Can this be reimplemented in something like Python (stdlib-only) to simplify
builds and distribution?
Will distributing a Python script be simpler compared to a (large-ish) static binary?
[upstream]: https://github.com/Debian/debiman/