[PATCH app-sessreg 0/4] Providing more platform information in the man page

Gaetan Nadon memsize at videotron.ca
Mon Mar 14 11:19:45 PDT 2011


This series aims at improving the man page by providing platform information
in a more consistent way. It does a good job of covering the System V vs BSD
implementations (although silent on Linux) by describing and comparing both.

This puts the reader in a mind set where information on all platforms is provided
rather than being limited or customized to one specific platform. This is the
appropriate strategy particularly given than the sessreg command it documents also
works on all these platforms by gracefully handling options differences.

Unfortunately, it diverges from this strategy when providing filenames
and man pages references. The man page digs into the source code to provide
filenames that are only relevant to the platform on which the man page is built,
with the assumption that it will only be read there and not on the web, for example.

It also makes assumptions based on headers found to suggest other man pages to read.
Some of these assumptions are incorrect. It does not handle very well the utmp vs utmpx
usage by platforms. I have not attempted to correct that but this is one more reason
for not attempting to guess which one, or both, are used.

This is a "core dump" of information I gathered from the various man pages on the web as
well as other articles.

SCO:		var/adm/utmp	var/adm/wtmp	var/adm/lastlog	  utmp(5) ttys(5)
		var/adm/utmpx	var/adm/wtmpx			  utmpx(5)
Solaris:	var/adm/utmp	var/adm/wtmp	var/adm/lastlog	  utmp(5)			 	
		var/adm/utmpx	var/adm/wtmpx 			  utmpx(5)
lastlog does not have a public interface and not mentioned in man pages
In SCO, /etc/auth/system/ttys is not related to /etc/ttys.
System V (including Linux) don't have ttys file

Linux:		var/run/utmp	var/log/wtmp	var/log/lastlog	 No ttys    utmp(5) utmpx(5) lastlog(5)

OpenBSD:	var/run/utmp	var/log/wtmp	var/log/lastlog	 /etc/ttys  utmp(5)  ttys(5)
FreeBSD:	var/run/utmp	var/log/wtmp	var/log/lastlog	 /etc/ttys  utmp(5)		
NetBSD:		var/run/utmp	var/log/wtmp	var/log/lastlog	 /etc/ttys  utmp(5)  ttys(5)
		var/run/utmpx	var/log/wtmpx	var/log/lastlogx            utmpx(5)
MAC		var/run/utmp	var/log/wtmp	var/log/lastlog	 /etc/ttys  utmp(5)  ttys(5)	deprecated
		var/run/utmpx	backward	backward	            utmpx(5)     do not use utmp.h
MAC has deprecated utmp and only uses utmpx but utmp files are still being used

Gaetan Nadon (4):
  man: computing the ttys file location is not required
  man: SEE ALSO: computing the man pages to reference is not required
  man: location of utmp/wtmp/lastlog files should not be computed
  config: remove no longer used filenames.sed.c

 man/Makefile.am     |   14 ++------------
 man/filenames.sed.c |   29 -----------------------------
 man/sessreg.man     |   25 ++++++++++++++++---------
 3 files changed, 18 insertions(+), 50 deletions(-)
 delete mode 100644 man/filenames.sed.c



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