How to install custom man (manual) pages on mac os x
First of all you may want to check if the man page your are trying to install is properly formatted and can be opened by man
command. To do this pass the path to the man file to man
command. It must contain a slash in order to be recognized as a path, for example:
man /usr/local/man/man1/custom_command.1
Then you should make sure the path you are installing your man page to is on the search list of man
command. In order to find the man page its path must be either:
- specified with
-M
option to theman
command - set in the environmental variable
MANPATH
- listed in its config file (
/private/etc/man.conf
on OS X) underMANPATH
statement or underMANPATH_MAP
statement (which applies only to locations in yourPATH
environmental variable) - located in the location relative to where binary is installed, i.e.: if binary is installed in
path/bin
the man page is searched for inpath/man
,path/cat
andpath/bin/man
,path/bin/cat
- listed in files added in
/private/etc/manpaths.d/
directory
The name of the man page file must be same as command name with optional section number. It may be gzipped.
To see where man will search for your custom_command
man page run
man -d custom_command
OS X
user command man pages are typically created in:
/usr/local/share/man/man1
If you prefer to create man pages in a different directory edit:
/private/etc/man.conf
Then add the new path to MANPATH_MAP
, for example:
MANPATH_MAP /usr/local/bin /usr/local/man
To have man search a non-default path with a default fallback (/usr/local/share/man
):
MANPATH /usr/local/man
MANPATH /usr/local/share/man
MANPATH_MAP /usr/local/bin /usr/local/share/man