Messages in this thread | | | Date | Thu, 10 Aug 2006 07:11:25 +0200 | From | Michael Kerrisk <> | Subject | man-pages-2-38 and man-pages-2.39 are released |
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Gidday,
I recently released man-pages-2.38 and man-pages-2.39, which can be found at the location in the .sig.
There was one new page in these releases, describing various Unix standards:
standards.7 mtk Based on material taken from intro.2, but expanded to include discussion of many additional standards.
There was a significant reworking of the CONFORMING TO sections in most manual pages. mtk
* generally try to rationalise the names used for standards. The preferred names are now documented as the head words of the list in standards(7). For the future: there is probably no need to talk about anything more than C89, C99, POSIX.1-2001 (or later), xBSD, and SVr4. (In particular, I've eliminated most references to XPG and SVID, replacing them with references to SUS or SVr4.)
* eliminate discussion of errors that can occur on other systems. This information exists only patchily in the manual pages, is probably of limited use, is hard to maintain, and was in some cases simply wrong (and probably always was).
* Tried to ensure that those interfaces specified in C99 or POSIX.1-2001 are marked as such in their manual pages.
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The man-pages set contains sections 2, 3, 4, 5, and 7 of the manual pages. These sections describe the following:
2: (Linux) system calls 3: (libc) library functions 4: Devices 5: File formats and protocols 7: Overview pages, conventions, etc.
As far as this list is concerned the most relevant parts are: all of sections 2 and 4, which describe kernel-userland interfaces; in section 5, the proc(5) manual page, which attempts (it's always catching up) to be a comprehensive description of /proc; and various pages in section 7, some of which are overview pages of kernel features (e.g., networking protocols).
If you make a change to a kernel-userland interface, or observe a discrepancy between the manual pages and reality, would you please send me (at mtk-manpages@gmx.net ) one of the following (in decreasing order of preference):
1. An in-line "diff -u" patch with text changes for the corresponding manual page. (The most up-to-date version of the manual pages can always be found at ftp://ftp.win.tue.nl/pub/linux-local/manpages or ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/docs/manpages .)
2. Some raw text describing the changes, which I can then integrate into the appropriate manual page.
3. A message alerting me that some part of the manual pages does not correspond to reality. Eventually, I will try to remedy the situation.
Obviously, as we get further down this list, more of my time is required, and things may go slower, especially when the changes concern some part of the kernel that I am ignorant about and I can't find someone to assist.
Cheers,
Michael
-- Michael Kerrisk maintainer of Linux man pages Sections 2, 3, 4, 5, and 7
Want to help with man page maintenance? Grab the latest tarball at ftp://ftp.win.tue.nl/pub/linux-local/manpages/, read the HOWTOHELP file and grep the source files for 'FIXME'. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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