Apple - I downloaded a shell executable and man pages from a source I trust. Where should I put them?
The binary file goes in /usr/local/bin
. Each man page goes in the folder usr/local/share/man/manN
where N
is the number at the end of the man page file name. For example, gdisk.8
should appear in the folder /usr/local/share/man/man8
. When finished adding all man pages, you should run the command
/usr/libexec/makewhatis /usr/local/share/man
to update the whatis database stored in the text file /usr/local/share/man/whatis
. This whatis
text file is used by the whatis
and apropos
commands.
/usr/local
in general is the place to install user-provided unix-like software.
- For the binaries, see Where should shell tools be installed? or Where should shell tools be installed? which both point to
/usr/local/bin
. - For man pages use
/usr/local/share/man/manN
(with N being the chapter, usually 1 or 8 for commands) and make sure/usr/local/share/man
is in/etc/manpaths
(or added as an additional entry in a specific file in/etc/manpaths.d
).