NAME

makewhatis — index the manual pages

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

The makewhatis utility writes the index that apropos(1) searches and man(1) finds pages by: the file oxdoc.db in each manual directory. For every page in the directory's manN subdirectories and their architecture subdirectories, it records the page's names, sections, architecture and one-line description, the values of the mdoc(7) macros listed in apropos(1), and every word of its text. A file consisting of a .so request alone, or a hard link to another page, adds its name to that page.

Without arguments, makewhatis indexes every manual directory named in /etc/man.conf; with dir arguments, those directories. A new index replaces the old one only once it is complete.

The options are as follows:

-a

Accepted for compatibility: all architectures are always indexed.

-C file

Read the manual directories from file instead of /etc/man.conf.

-d dir [file ...]

Index each file again in the existing index of dir, adding it if it is new.

-n

Do everything but write the index.

-t file ...

Check that each file can be indexed usefully: that it has a one-line description.

-u dir [file ...]

Remove each file from the index of dir.

The index format is described in MAN.md of the OxideBSD documentation; a program finding an index of another version ignores it and says so.

FILES

oxdoc.db

the index in each manual directory

/etc/man.conf

the manual directories

/usr/share/man/oxdoc.db

the index of the system's pages, built with the system

EXIT STATUS

The makewhatis utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.

SEE ALSO

apropos(1), man(1), man.conf(5)

HISTORY

This implementation was written for OxideBSD; its keys follow mandoc(1)'s makewhatis.