Re: Adding makemandb as build tool for man.db

[Robert Swindells <rjs%fdy2.co.uk@localhost>]

David Brownlee <abs%absd.org@localhost> wrote:
>On lower powered (and particularly lower memory boxes), the makemandb
>on first boot after install can run for some time and significantly
>affect the performance of the system (in extreme cases for several
>hours).
>
>We already have makewhatis as a build tool. What do people think of
>adding makemandb and including man.db to the distribution (potentially
>optionally).
>
>The downside is it would around double the size of man.tgz if enabled,
>but it would avoid a particularly bad first impression for anyone
>installing on an smaller boxes such as embedded arm/x86 (so not just
>vax/m68k/sh3/sparc users :-p)

Or just turn off building the man page database on slower systems by
default. I do this on my mac68k machine and on development systems that
get frequently rebooted.

Robert Swindells