> > Some platforms simply do not have the tools.  Jeremy Reed's Linux 
> > distribution built around pkgsrc does not.  Neither does any 
> > Linux-From-Scratch installation.  The common feature here is a minimal 
> > installation of the operating system.  It is not hard to create such a 
> > minimal NetBSD installation either for special purposes.
> 
> Does either of them have catpages installed in the base system? I also
> believe that GNU man falls into category (a), it has the magic to call
> troff/groff directly.

My Linux (pkglinux) only has cat pages installed if they are in the pkgsrc 
packages installed. My bare minimum system has: coreutils, util-linux, 
bash, shadow and various other essential packages. I didn't check these, 
but I assume there may be a few cat pages.

As for man on Linux, I use wip/man (and I previously used wip/man-db). 
They do call groff directly (and can build cat pages too).

I think I would prefer that pkgsrc did not install pre-formatted 
cat pages. If I install "man" then I will install groff too.