NAME

       dh_installman - install man pages into package build directories

SYNOPSIS

       dh_installman [debhelper options] [manpage ...]

DESCRIPTION

       dh_installman is a debhelper program that handles installing man pages into the correct
       locations in package build directories.

       In compat 10 and earlier, this program was primarily for when upstream's build system does
       not properly install them as a part of its install step (or it does not have an install
       step).  In compat 11 and later, it also supports the default searchdir plus --sourcedir
       like dh_install(1) and has the advantage that it respects the nodoc build profile (unlike
       dh_install(1)).

       Even if you prefer to use dh_install(1) for installing the manpages, dh_installman can
       still be useful for converting the manpage encoding to UTF-8 and for converting .so links
       (as described below).  However, that part happens automatically without any explicit
       configuration.

       You tell dh_installman what man pages go in your packages, and it figures out where to
       install them based on the section field in their .TH or .Dt line. If you have a properly
       formatted .TH or .Dt line, your man page will be installed into the right directory, with
       the right name (this includes proper handling of pages with a subsection, like 3perl,
       which are placed in man3, and given an extension of .3perl). If your .TH or .Dt line is
       incorrect or missing, the program may guess wrong based on the file extension.

       It also supports translated man pages, by looking for extensions like .ll.8 and .ll_LL.8,
       or by use of the --language switch.

       If dh_installman seems to install a man page into the wrong section or with the wrong
       extension, this is because the man page has the wrong section listed in its .TH or .Dt
       line. Edit the man page and correct the section, and dh_installman will follow suit. See
       man(7) for details about the .TH section, and mdoc(7) for the .Dt section. If
       dh_installman seems to install a man page into a directory like /usr/share/man/pl/man1/,
       that is because your program has a name like foo.pl, and dh_installman assumes that means
       it is translated into Polish. Use --language=C to avoid this.

       After the man page installation step, dh_installman will check to see if any of the man
       pages in the temporary directories of any of the packages it is acting on contain .so
       links. If so, it changes them to symlinks.

       Also, dh_installman will use man to guess the character encoding of each manual page and
       convert it to UTF-8. If the guesswork fails for some reason, you can override it using an
       encoding declaration. See manconv(1) for details.

       From debhelper compatibility level 11 on, dh_install will fall back to looking in
       debian/tmp for files, if it does not find them in the current directory (or wherever
       you've told it to look using --sourcedir).

FILES

       debian/package.manpages
           Lists man pages to be installed.

           Supports substitution variables in compat 13 and later as documented in debhelper(7).

OPTIONS

       -A, --all
           Install all files specified by command line parameters in ALL packages acted on.

       --language=ll
           Use this to specify that the man pages being acted on are written in the specified
           language.

       --sourcedir=dir
           Look in the specified directory for files to be installed.  This option requires
           compat 11 or later (it is silently ignored in compat 10 or earlier).

           Note that this is not the same as the --sourcedirectory option used by the dh_auto_*
           commands. You rarely need to use this option, since dh_installman automatically looks
           for files in debian/tmp in debhelper compatibility level 11 and above.

       manpage ...
           Install these man pages into the first package acted on. (Or in all packages if -A is
           specified).

EXAMPLES

       An example debian/manpages file could look like this:

         doc/man/foo.1
         # Translations
         doc/man/foo.da.1
         doc/man/foo.de.1
         doc/man/foo.fr.1
         # NB: The following line is considered a polish translation
         # of "foo.1" (and not a manpage written in perl called "foo.pl")
         doc/man/foo.pl.1
         # ...

NOTES

       An older version of this program, dh_installmanpages(1), is still used by some packages,
       and so is still included in debhelper.  It is, however, deprecated, due to its
       counterintuitive and inconsistent interface. Use this program instead.

SEE ALSO

       debhelper(7)

       This program is a part of debhelper.

AUTHOR

       Joey Hess <joeyh@debian.org>