MAN.CONF(5)               FreeBSD File Formats Manual              MAN.CONF(5)

NAME
     man.conf - man(1) and manpath(1) configuration files

DESCRIPTION
     The man.conf file is used to configure the manual search path, locales,
     and utility set for man(1) and its related utilities.  During
     initialization, man(1) reads the configuration files located at
     /usr/local/etc/man.d/*.conf and /etc/man.conf.

     The files contained in /usr/local/etc/man.d/*.conf are intended to be
     used by the ports(7) system for extending the manual set to support
     additional paths and locales.  /etc/man.conf is intended to be used by
     the local administrator to set additional policy.

     Currently supported configuration variables include:

           MANCONFIG     Overrides the default location to import additional
                         manual configuration files.  Defaults to
                         /usr/local/etc/man.d/*.conf.

           MANPATH       Adds the specified directory to the manual search
                         path.

           MANLOCALE     Indicates support is available for the given locale.

     For pages in a given language, overriding the default toolset for display
     is supported via the following definitions:

           EQN_LANG
           NROFF_LANG
           PIC_LANG
           TBL_LANG
           TROFF_LANG
           REFER_LANG
           VGRIND_LANG

     See the EXAMPLES section for how to use these variables.

IMPLEMENTATION NOTES
     The parser used for this utility is very basic and only supports comment
     characters (#) at the beginning of a line.

FILES
     /etc/man.conf                   System configuration file.
     /usr/local/etc/man.d/*.conf     Local configuration files.

EXAMPLES
     A perl port that needs to install additional manual pages outside of the
     default location could install a file in /usr/local/etc/man.d/perl.conf
     with the following contents:

           # Add perl man pages to search path
           MANPATH /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.9/man
           MANPATH /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.9/perl/man

     A Japanese localization port could install a custom toolset and include a
     file in /usr/local/etc/man.d/ja-man-doc.conf with the following contents:

           # Setup Japanese toolset
           MANLOCALE       ja_JP.eucJP
           EQN_JA          /usr/local/bin/geqn
           PIC_JA          /usr/local/bin/gpic
           TBL_JA          /usr/local/bin/gtbl
           NROFF_JA        /usr/local/bin/groff -man -dlang=ja_JP.eucJP
           TROFF_JA        /usr/local/bin/groff -man -dlang=ja_JP.euc.jp

     If the system administrator decides to override the LOCALBASE make(1)
     variable causing all ports(7) to be installed into /opt instead of
     /usr/local, specifying the following in /etc/man.conf will accommodate
     this change:

           # Look for additional configuration files
           MANCONFIG /opt/etc/man.d/*.conf

SEE ALSO
     apropos(1), man(1), manpath(1), whatis(1)

FreeBSD 13.1-RELEASE-p6          June 3, 2011          FreeBSD 13.1-RELEASE-p6