dh_installman - install man pages into package build directories

       Joey Hess <joeyh@debian.org>

13.24.1ubuntu2                                     2025-02-11                                   DH_INSTALLMAN(1)

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).

       An example debian/package.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
         # ...

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

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

       dh_installman - install man pages into package build directories

       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.

-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).

debhelper(7)

       This program is a part of debhelper.

dh_installman [debhelperoptions] [manpage ...]