DH_INSTALLMANPAGES(1)

📦
version 14.5ubuntu1 · 12 versions
, in ubuntu stonking

💅 DH_INSTALLMANPAGES(1) — the Debhelper girlies know 👑

okay so bestie, welcome to dh_installmanpages, straight out of the Debhelper manual section 1. grab a lil matcha, we're doing deprecated-program lore today ✨

🌸 NAME 🌸

dh_installmanpages — the old-style man page installer (and yeah, she's deprecated, we'll get to that 😭)

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

dh_installmanpages [debhelper options] [file ...]

like literally that's it, that's the whole vibe 💖

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

okay so dh_installmanpages is a debhelper program, and her whole job — her main character purpose — is auto-installing man pages into usr/share/man/ inside your package build directories. she just does it. no notes. 👑

she is a DWIM-style program, which means her interface is lowkey unlike literally every other debhelper program out there. and here's the part where I hold your hand: she is deprecated. you are encouraged to use dh_installman(1) instead, fr fr. that's the upgrade path, bestie, take it 🫶

so what does she actually do? she scans the current directory and all the subdirectories for filenames that look like man pages. important note though — only real files get looked at; symlinks are ignored, she's not falling for that 💀 then she runs file(1) on them to verify they're in the correct format. and then, based on the files' extensions, she installs them into the correct man directory. multi-step queen 🎀

now — all filenames you specify as parameters? she skips those. all of them. which is actually so useful if by default she installs some man pages that you Do Not Want. like, not today, thank you 💅

and after the whole man page installation step is done, she does one last little check: if any of the man pages are .so links, she changes them into symlinks. cute, efficient, iconic. ⭐

🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

  • file ... — do not install these files as man pages, even if they look like valid man pages. like she sees them, she respects them, but she's not installing them. periodt 🙈

💀 BUGS 💀

okay here's where we have to be real with each other:

  • dh_installmanpages will install the man pages it finds into all packages you tell it to act on, because she genuinely can't tell what package the man pages belong in. and like... this is almost never what you really want. (use -p to work around this, or — and I cannot stress this enough — use the much better dh_installman(1) program instead 😭)
  • files ending in .man will be ignored. just straight up ignored. no cap.
  • files specified as parameters that contain spaces in their filenames will not be processed properly. so... don't do that 🫠
bestie warning: this whole program is deprecated, the package-detection thing is genuinely broken-by-design, and the space thing is a real bug. dh_installman(1) is the glow-up. you deserve better 💖

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

this program is a part of debhelper. one big happy family 🧚

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Joey Hess <joeyh@debian.org> — the legend herself 💜

and that's the whole page, bestie!! this beauty is from debhelper version 14.5ubuntu1, dated 2026-09-21 — so you know she's ✨fresh✨. now go use dh_installman(1) instead, I'm literally begging you, mwah 💋🌸💖

📦 where this page comes from