mandoc mit Homebrew, apk, apt, dnf, MacPorts, Nix, pacman, zypper, scoop installieren

Projektlinks

• Homepage
• Repository
• Paketmanager-Seite

Befehle und Aliase

• bsdapropos
• bsdmakewhatis
• bsdman
• bsdsoelim
• bsdwhatis
• demandoc
• mandoc

Projektgeschichte

The mandoc development history traces the project through the older `mdocml` name and rapid 2009 development by Kristaps Dzonsons, including releases around March and April 2009 and OpenBSD integration work. The `mandoc` name replaced `mdocterm` in March 2009, and the tool became closely associated with OpenBSD integration after cooperation between Kristaps Dzonsons and Ingo Schwarze.

The mandoc utility first appeared in OpenBSD 4.8. Over time it grew from a focused `mdoc` formatter into a broader toolset including `mandoc`, `man`, `apropos`, `makewhatis`, `catman`, `demandoc`, CGI support, database support, linting, HTML output, markdown output for `mdoc`, and related developer-facing libraries.

Adoptionsgeschichte

The official packages and ports page records broad adoption across BSDs and Linux distributions. OpenBSD bundled mandoc in the base system in 2010 and made it the default formatter, searcher, and viewer over later milestones; FreeBSD, NetBSD, DragonFly BSD, illumos, macOS, Alpine, Void, Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, openSUSE, Gentoo, NixOS, and others have packages or integrations.

That adoption matters because mandoc is not just another formatter: on several systems it replaces or complements groff/man-db for everyday `man` and `apropos` usage, making it part of the base documentation experience.

Wie es verwendet wird

At the CLI, `mandoc` reads `mdoc` or `man` input from files or stdin, auto-detects the language, and formats it for terminal display or other outputs. Output modes include ASCII, locale, UTF-8, HTML, man, markdown for `mdoc`, PDF, PostScript, and parse-tree output.

The `man.conf` manual documents `/etc/man.conf` as the configuration file for the mandoc-family `man`, `apropos`, and `makewhatis` utilities. Its directives can set manual search paths and output options, and the file is optional.

Warum Paket-Nerds sich dafür interessieren

mandoc is significant to package maintainers because it is a lean alternative to full troff/groff stacks for manual-page rendering and validation. It is small, fast, portable C, and its linting helps find bad manual-page markup before packages ship.

It also has practical downstream impact: whether a system uses mandoc, man-db, groff, or a combination changes man-page rendering, HTML generation, apropos databases, and default configuration files.

Zeitleiste

• 2009: `mdocterm` was renamed to `mandoc` during early development.
• 2009: OpenBSD imported mandoc 1.7.12 and began closer integration work.
• 2010: mandoc first appeared in OpenBSD 4.8.
• 2014: OpenBSD switched man(1) to the mandoc implementation.
• 2017: mandoc 1.14.2 added `-Tmarkdown` and other features.
• 2021: mandoc 1.14.6 was released with improved tagging and a new `mdoc(7)` macro.

Related projects

• mandoc is closely related to OpenBSD manual infrastructure, BSD.lv, `mdoc`, `man`, `roff`, `tbl`, `eqn`, `apropos`, and `makewhatis`.
• It is often compared with groff and man-db, and it powers or influences several manual-page web and package documentation tools.

Quellen

• https://mandoc.bsd.lv/
• https://mandoc.bsd.lv/devhistory.html
• https://mandoc.bsd.lv/man/man.conf.5.html
• https://mandoc.bsd.lv/man/mandoc.1.html
• https://mandoc.bsd.lv/ports.html