[erlang-questions] Re: Erlang manuals problem when installing from Homebrew

[Dmitry Demeshchuk]

"homebrew" doesn't mean actually homebrew, right? apt-get really
installs Erlang with proper manuals location, but homebrew doesn't. By
the way, as far as I remember, the directory structure that apt-get
generates differs much from the one generated by homebrew.

I agree with the point about possible versions conflicts. But I don't
believe anyone would often call Erlang manual pages like
"/some/long/path/erl -man lists", he'll just use "erl -man lists" in
most cases. And this way he'll use some particular Erlang version,
most actual to him.
If reading several manuals' versions is required, it's easy to use
simple custom scripts. Also, it's possible to make erl look for the
manuals at the default locations first, and only if the manuals aren't
found there, look them up using $MANPATH.

But my main concern is not this $MANPATH thing. It's rather the
uncertainty of the possible mans locations and being unable to
configure them in any way.

On Wed, Apr 6, 2011 at 8:21 PM, Boris Mühmer
<boris.muehmer@REDACTED> wrote:
> I only use "homebrew" installations, and never had those problems You
> describe (so far... lucky me). Actually I have different Erlang/OTP
> versions on a single machine. I supply different "prefixes" to
> configure and "erl" always finds the corresponding man page version
> under "<PREFIX>/lib/erlang/man".
>
> The systems I use at work and home are always Ubuntu systems with
> versions 10.04 and 10.10 (and very few 09.x ones). The only thing I
> have to complain about is when running "make install-docs" (using an
> unpatched R14BX source) that "env" doesn't properly evaluate escript
> calls. But I start to believe this may be an "env" problem. I didn't
> have time to have a closer look at this problem, because fixing the
> makefile is much faster.
>
> Just one questions why should "erl" "understand" the MANPATH variable?
>
> To quote the "erl" man page:
>    -man Module :
>        Displays the manual page for the Erlang module Module . Only
> supported on Unix.
>
> Evaluating the MANPATH would lead to possible wrong versions,
> especially on systems with multiple erlang installations.
>
> When I really want the "man" command to include the erlang-man-pages,
> I would add "<PREFIX>/lib/erlang/man" to the MANPATH environment variable.
>
> IMHO it doesn't make any sense to use "erl -man ls", instead of "man ls".
>
>
> Just my 2 cents, no offense meant...
>
>  - boris
>
>
>
> 2011/4/6 Dmitry Demeshchuk <demeshchuk@REDACTED>:
>> Fixing the recipe is obvious. But maybe the problem can be solved in a
>> more proper way, like using some undocumented env variable, or
>> something?
>>
>> Actually, the fact that Erlang doesn't understand $MANPATH seems odd
>> to me. Also, there are no proper manuals locations at the
>> documentation, so the user will have to find them out himself.
>>
>> On Wed, Apr 6, 2011 at 7:03 PM, Jack Moffitt <jack@REDACTED> wrote:
>>>> The question is: is there the more right way to point Erlang to the
>>>> right manuals directory?
>>>
>>> The more right way would be to fix the brew recipe.
>>>
>>> Thanks for finding that workaround though; I was having the same
>>> problem but was too lazy to fix it.
>>>
>>> jack.
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Best regards,
>> Dmitry Demeshchuk
>> _______________________________________________
>> erlang-questions mailing list
>> erlang-questions@REDACTED
>> http://erlang.org/mailman/listinfo/erlang-questions
>>
>



-- 
Best regards,
Dmitry Demeshchuk