UbuntuManpageRepository

Summary

To create a set of scripts that can generate a complete repository of all manpages in Ubuntu distributions, marked up in an HTML format, indexed by Google, and hosted at http://manpages.ubuntu.com.

Rationale

The Ubuntu world is lacking a comprehensive website for browsing and searching all manpages in HTML markup. Other sites exist for other distributions, such as http://manpages.debian.net and http://www.linuxmanpages.com. But the Ubuntu distribution often contains different manpages, as the packages and versions differ from other distributions.

Several tools exist that can generate HTML from man's .tar.gz and groff formats. I have prototyped a shell script that will dig through a complete Ubuntu mirror, extracting manpages out of .deb's, converting them to HTML, and writing them to a <distro>/man<section>/<manpage>.html

Use Cases

  • Manny wants to search manpage documentation for packages that he does not have installed on his system.
  • Manisha wants to perform a full text search of all manpage documentation (she doesn't know the title of the manpage she needs).

Scope

The scope of this specification is to describe the design of an Ubuntu Manpage Repository, including the scripts to generate and the user interface for displaying.

The repository should include all supported Ubuntu versions.

  • Currently: Dapper, Feisty, Gutsy, Hardy, Intrepid (under development)

The repository should handle all components.

  • main, restricted, universe, multiverse

The repository should also handle all locales and character sets having manpages cleanly.

Design

Implementation

Outstanding Issues

Comments

CategorySpec

UbuntuManpageRepository (last edited 2008-09-05 23:41:35 by cpe-66-68-158-133)