Manual Pages

Many Void packages come with manual ('man') pages. The default installation includes the mandoc manpage toolset, via the mdocml package.

The man(1) command can be used to show man pages:

$ man chroot

Every man page belongs to a particular section:

• 1: User commands (Programs) - 2: System calls - 3: Library calls - 4: Special files (devices) - 5: File formats and configuration files - 6: Games - 7: Overview, conventions, and miscellaneous - 8: System management commands

Refer to man-pages(7) for details.

There are some man pages which have the same name, but are used in different contexts, and are thus in a different section. You can specify which one to use by including the section number in the call to man:

$ man 1 printf

man can be configured via man.conf(5).

The mandoc toolset contains apropos(1), which can be used to search for manual pages. apropos uses a database that can be generated and updated with the makewhatis(8) command:

shell with special root directory xbps-uchroot(1) - XBPS utility to chroot
and bind mount with Linux namespaces xbps-uunshare(1) - XBPS utility to
chroot and bind mount with Linux user namespaces chroot(2) - change root
directory ```

The `mdocml` package provides a cron job to update the database daily,
`/etc/cron.daily/makewhatis`. You will need to install a [cron
daemon](./cron.md) for this functionality to be activated.

Development and POSIX manuals are not installed by default, but are
available via the `man-pages-devel` and `man-pages-posix` packages.