MANLIFTER(1) Documentation Tools MANLIFTER(1)NAMEmanlifter - mass-conversion script and test harness for doclifter
SYNOPSISmanlifter [-d option] [-e] [-f listfile] [-h] [-I mandir] [-m] [-M]
[-o outdir] [-p patch-directory] [-P] [-q] [-v] [-s section]
[-X exclude] name...
manlifter [-S]
DESCRIPTIONmanlifter is a script that sequences doclifter(1) to convert an entire
manual-page tree to XML-Docbook, optionally also generating HTML from
the XML. Another use is as a torture-test tool for doclifter; it logs
errors to standard output and collects timings.
Called without any file arguments, manlifter tries to convert all
eligible man pages installed on the system, placing the resulting xml
files under xmlman in the current directory. Each successfully
translated page foo.N is copied to manN/foo.xml beneath the output
directory, regardless of what source directory it came from.
A manual page is considered ineligible for batch conversion if it
contains text indicating it has been generated from DocBook masters of
from Doxygen.
For each source file examined, if the destination file exists and is
newer than the source, the conversion is skipped; thus, incremental
runs of manlifter do the least work needed to keep the target XML tree
up to date. Likewise, in -h mode derived HTML files are only made when
necessary.
Stub pages that are just .so redirections are translated to
corresponding symlinks of XML files (and, with -h, HTML files).
manlifter may also be called with a single file argument, which is
interpreted as the stem name of a potential manual page. manlifter
then searches all selected manual sections for a matching page and
attempts to convert it. In this case, a copy of the man page and the
converted version are dropped immediately beheath the output directory,
with the names foobar.man and foobar.man.xml, respectively. This mode
is normally only of interest only to doclifter developers for debugging
that program.
In either of the above cases, manlifter will uncompress the file if it
has a .gz, .bz2 or .Z suffix on the name.
Options are as follows:
-d
Pass the string argument to each doclifter call as options. Each
space-separated token in the string becomes a separate argument in
the call.
-e
Run in log-filter mode (mainly of interest to doclifter
developers). In this mode, manlifter reads a test log from standard
input and filters it in a a way dependent on the -f and -q options.
If neither of these is given, messages from successful runs are
stripped out and only errors passed through to standard output.
-f
Normally, run doclifter on the files named by each line in the
argument file. In error-filter mode the argument is instead
interpreted as a filtering regular expression.
-h
Also generate HTML translations into the output directory. DocBook
citerefentry markup is transformed to hyperlinks in the directory,
and a contents listing is generated to index.html.
-I
Specify the root of the manual-page tree. By default this is
/usr/share/man.
-m
Make a patch to correct the last page fetched. It is copied, an
editor is called on the copy (using the environment variable
$EDITOR), and then diff(1) is called to drop the patch in the
prepatch directory. Fails with an error if such a patch is already
present.
-M
Lift the specified files, then do the equivalent of the -m option.
-o
Set the output directory into which XML-DocBook translations will
be dropped. By default this is xmlman under the current directory
in batch mode, or the current directory otherwise.
-p
Interpret the argument as the name of a patch directory (the
default name is prepatch under the current directory). Each file
named foo.N.patch is interpreted as a patch to be applied to the
manual page foo(N) before doclifter translates it.
-P
Enable profiling using the Python hotshot module; this is only
useful for tuning doclifter so it runs faster. Raw data is written
to manlifter.prof, and a digested report is appended to the log on
standard output. Warning: the raw data files can become huge, and
the postprocessing for report generation can take as long as the
actual processing (or longer!).
-q
Normally, pass the -q (quiet) option to each doclifter call. In
error-filter mode, return a list of files on which translation
failed.
-v
Pass the -v (verbose) option to each doclifter call. This option
can be repeated to increase the verbosity level.
-s
Specify a section to scan. Use this with an argument; it should not
be necessary when doing a conversion of the entire tree.
-S
Compile error statistics from a manlifter logfile presented on
standard input. This option will be of interest mainly to doclifter
developers.
-X
In batch mode exclude pages listed in the argument file. Meant to
be used for pages that are known good and take an extremely long
time to lift, in order to cut down the time for a test run. (Most
pages lift in less than a half second, but a few can take 15
minutes or longer.)
manlifter emits a logfile to standard output. The file begins with a
timestamp line and a blank line, and ends with a line giving run time
and various interesting statistics. Between these are stanzas,
separated by blank lines, one for each file on which doclifter was run.
The first line of each stanza beguns with "! ", followed by the
pathname of the source manual pager, followed by "=" and the return
status of doclifter run on that file. Following that is a space and
doclifter's runtime in seconds.
This initial line may be followed by information messages and the error
output of the doclifter run.
manlifter must find a copy of doclifter in either the current directory
or one of the command directories in your PATH in order to run.
BUGS
HTML generation is painfully slow. Unfortunately, there is little we
can do to remedy this, because XSLT engines are painfully slow.
SEE ALSOdoclifter(1), xmlto(1)AUTHOR
Eric S. Raymond <esr@thyrsus.com>
There is a project web page at http://www.catb.org/~esr/doclifter/.
manlifter 06/03/2014 MANLIFTER(1)
