Hi,

Does anyone know for a fact whether 1.6g was the final release of man,
the man program in Slackware 14.2? I've found the following thread in
the place with the ads, but it reads like a suspicion that maintenance
stopped not a 100% definitive statement. I can't find a final
announcement from the maintainer saying he had stopped. But I can't find
where the source might be hosted either.

https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/where-is-upstream-for-man-1-6g-4175556980/page3.html

I also don't see much written about the decision to change to man-db in
15.0. Guess that was drama free, eh?

I'm starting a new run through Linux from Scratch and am deciding
whether to substitute in man-1.6g, stick with man-db, or try to make
mandoc work. Leaning towards man-1.6g, just as an educational exercise.
(I have nothing against man-db, btw.) Perhaps I should pick up Mancha's
makewhatis patch from 14.2.

Regards,
Mike Sm.

On Thu, 21 Sep 2023 12:22:00 -0400, Mike Small wrote:
> Does anyone know for a fact whether 1.6g was the final release of man,
> the man program in Slackware 14.2?

Probably, Slackware 14.2 was released in 2016, it has the directory
/usr/doc/man-1.6g where the newest file is TODO from 2010.

> I've found the following thread in
> the place with the ads, but it reads like a suspicion that maintenance
> stopped not a 100% definitive statement. I can't find a final
> announcement from the maintainer saying he had stopped. But I can't find
> where the source might be hosted either.

In the LSM file in that /usr/doc directory it says that the sources
should be available at

http://primates.ximian.com/~flucifredi/man/
http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~lucifred/man/
and
ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/doctools/man/

None of those URLs work, but if you replace ftp with http in the last URL
you can find latest man 1.6g from 2011 at redirected
http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/apps/doctools/man/

> I also don't see much written about the decision to change to man-db in
> 15.0. Guess that was drama free, eh?

Yes, from the ChangeLog.txt for 14.2:

-8<--------------------------------------------------------------
+--------------------------+
Wed Nov 29 08:15:09 UTC 2017
a/coreutils-8.28-x86_64-2.txz: Rebuilt.
Removed ancient (1992) aliases "dir, vdir, d, v" from the profile
scripts.
a/lzlib-1.9-x86_64-1.txz: Added.
a/plzip-1.6-x86_64-1.txz: Added.
ap/man-1.6g-x86_64-3.txz: Removed.
ap/man-db-2.7.6.1-x86_64-1.txz: Added.
This package replaces the good old man package. Thanks to B. Watson.
ap/man-pages-4.14-noarch-2.txz: Rebuilt.
Don't ship a whatis database, since man-db doesn't need one.
ap/mariadb-10.2.11-x86_64-1.txz: Upgraded.
....
-8<--------------------------------------------------------------

regards Henrik

Henrik Carlqvist <Henrik.Carlqvist@deadspam.com> writes:

> On Thu, 21 Sep 2023 12:22:00 -0400, Mike Small wrote:
>> Does anyone know for a fact whether 1.6g was the final release of man,
>> the man program in Slackware 14.2?
>
> Probably, Slackware 14.2 was released in 2016, it has the directory
> /usr/doc/man-1.6g where the newest file is TODO from 2010.
....
> In the LSM file in that /usr/doc directory it says that the sources
> should be available at
>
> http://primates.ximian.com/~flucifredi/man/
> http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~lucifred/man/
> and
> ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/apps/doctools/man/
>
> None of those URLs work, but if you replace ftp with http in the last URL
> you can find latest man 1.6g from 2011 at redirected
> http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/apps/doctools/man/

And nothing more appears there. So that must indeed be the end.

I actually saw the maintainer speak at local Perl and Linux group talks
where I used to live. But to ask, "so why aren't you maintaining this
anymore? What happened?" would be a pretty annoying question for him
(though he seems to be a phenomenally nice man).

Thanks for digging. Helpful as always.

I'm thinking maybe I'll take the source out of slackware's dvd if I can
find it again after I move. Kind of wonder about the trustworthiness of
that old url. Though I do plan to skim the code (the point of all
this), probably I'd easily miss something snuck in.