Many Void packages come with manual ('man') pages. The default installation
includes the mandoc manpage toolset, via the mdocml
package.
The man(1) command can be used to show man pages:
$ man chroot
Every man page belongs to a particular section:
- 1: User commands (Programs)
- 2: System calls
- 3: Library calls
- 4: Special files (devices)
- 5: File formats and configuration files
- 6: Games
- 7: Overview, conventions, and miscellaneous
- 8: System management commands
Refer to man-pages(7) for details.
There are some man pages which have the same name, but are used in different
contexts, and are thus in a different section. You can specify which one to use
by including the section number in the call to man:
$ man 1 printf
man can be configured via man.conf(5).
The mandoc toolset contains apropos(1),
which can be used to search for manual pages. apropos uses a database that can
be generated and updated with the
makewhatis(8) command:
# makewhatis -a
$ apropos chroot
chroot(1) - run command or interactive shell with special root directory
xbps-uchroot(1) - XBPS utility to chroot and bind mount with Linux namespaces
xbps-uunshare(1) - XBPS utility to chroot and bind mount with Linux user namespaces
chroot(2) - change root directory
The mdocml package provides a cron job to update the database daily,
/etc/cron.daily/makewhatis. You will need to install a cron
daemon for this functionality to be activated.
Development and POSIX manuals are not installed by default, but are available
via the man-pages-devel and man-pages-posix packages.