Re: makemandb vs. man.conf's _whatdb

[Abhinav Upadhyay <er.abhinav.upadhyay%gmail.com@localhost>]

Dave Huang <dave <at> azeotrope.org> writes:
Hi,

> 
> man.conf(5) still documents _whatdb, but is that still used by the new 
makemandb with full text search (or
> anything else)? It seems that makemandb is hardcoded to put it's DB in 
/var/db/man.db. Also, it seems like
> there's no way to get it to put the DB elsewhere short of a recompile. I'm 
> low 
on disk space on the fs where
> /var/db is, so I tried symlinking /var/db/man.db and /var/db/man.db-journal 
> to 
another filesystem,
> but it looks like makemandb unlinks them and ends up recreating the DB in 
/var/db.
> 
> Perhaps man.conf needs a keyword to specify the DB path? (Replacing _whatdb 
> if 
that's no longer used by anything).

You can use the -o option of makemandb to optimize the database index,
it will save several MBs of disk space. Also, in case of emergency or
if you are not much fond of the full text search feature, you can use
the -l option of makemandb as well (It won't store an index of the
complete content of the man pages, just the NAME section).

I will try to investigate what will be the best way to provide support
for alternative database locations.


--
Abhinav