Copyright (c) 2011 Abhinav Upadhyay <er.abhinav.upadhyay (at] gmail.com>
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This code was developed as part of Google's Summer of Code 2011 program.
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.Dd June 18, 2016 .Dt MAKEMANDB 8 .Os .Sh NAME .Nm makemandb .Nd parse the manual pages and build a search index for .Xr apropos 1 .Sh SYNOPSIS .Nm .Op Fl floQqv .Op Fl C Ar path .Sh DESCRIPTION The .Nm utility traverses the directories containing man pages, parses the manual pages with the help of .Xr mandoc 3 and builds an SQLite database to support full text searches by .Xr apropos 1 . It obtains the list of directories to traverse using the .Fl p option of .Xr man 1 .
p It supports the following options: l -tag -width indent t Fl C Ar path Use different .Xr man 1 configuration file than the default,
a /etc/man.conf . t Fl f Force rebuilding the index from scratch, pruning the existing one. t Fl l Limit the parsing to only the NAME section of the pages. This option can be used to mimic the behavior of the classic .Xr apropos 1 and also to substantially save disk space. t Fl o Use this option to optimize the index for faster search by .Xr apropos 1 and also to significantly reduce disk space usage. This is an expensive I/O operation. t Fl Q Print only fatal error messages (i.e., when the database is left in an inconsistent state and needs manual intervention). t Fl q Print only warnings and error messages but no status updates. t Fl v Enable verbose output. This prints the name of every file being parsed and a summary at the end of the index update. .El
p The index generated by .Nm is also used by the .Xr whatis 1 program, replacing the old .Dq makewhatis program. .Ss DATABASE SCHEMA The name of the FTS table is mandb and its schema is as follows: l -column -offset indent "Column Name" "Column Description" t Li section Ta The section number of the page t Li name Ta The name of the page from the NAME section. t Li name_desc Ta The one line description from the NAME section. t Li desc Ta The DESCRIPTION section. t Li lib Ta The LIBRARY section. t Li return_vals Ta The RETURN VALUES section. t Li env Ta The ENVIRONMENT section. t Li files Ta The FILES section. t Li exit_status Ta The EXIT STATUS section. t Li diagnostics Ta The DIAGNOSTICS section. t Li errors Ta The ERRORS section. t Li md5_hash Ta MD5 checksum of the man page. t Li machine Ta The machine architecture (if any) for which the man page is relevant. .El .Sh FILES l -hang -width /etc/man.conf -compact t Pa /etc/man.conf The location of the SQLite FTS database can be configured using the .Cd _mandb tag. .El .Sh SEE ALSO .Xr apropos 1 , .Xr man 1 , .Xr whatis 1 , .Xr mandoc 3 , .Xr man.conf 5 .Sh AUTHORS .An Abhinav Upadhyay
Indexes created Sat Sep 20 22:09:52 GMT 2025