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

[Boris Mühmer]

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
>