Apropos: Difference between revisions

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imported>Ncfavier
Restore instructions for generating the cache manually
 
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As of NixOS 18.09, <code>apropos</code> (and likely also <code>whatis</code>) does not find anything when run. This is because the Apropos database is not generated automatically.
By default as of NixOS 21.05, <code>apropos</code>, <code>whatis</code> and <code>man -k</code> do not find anything when run, because the man page index cache is not generated.  


To generate it manually (and again to update it when new software is installed), run:
To generate it manually (and again to update it when new software is installed), run:
<syntaxhighlight lang=bash>
<syntaxhighlight lang=bash>
su -l root -c mandb
sudo mkdir -p /var/cache/man/nixos
sudo mandb
</syntaxhighlight>
</syntaxhighlight>


 
To enable automatically building the immutable cache, you can set:
For more information, see:
<syntaxhighlight lang=nix>
* {{issue|14472|Make NixOS module to update apropos database}}
documentation.man.generateCaches = true;
* {{pull|18521|mandb: fix apropos}}
</syntaxhighlight>
Note that this will rebuild the cache every time you change anything in <code>environment.systemPackages</code>, and will make the <code>mandb</code> command fail.

Latest revision as of 09:51, 19 June 2021

By default as of NixOS 21.05, apropos, whatis and man -k do not find anything when run, because the man page index cache is not generated.

To generate it manually (and again to update it when new software is installed), run:

sudo mkdir -p /var/cache/man/nixos
sudo mandb

To enable automatically building the immutable cache, you can set:

documentation.man.generateCaches = true;

Note that this will rebuild the cache every time you change anything in environment.systemPackages, and will make the mandb command fail.