Man pages with MakeMaker

Question

I wrote some man pages which I'd like to install from a MakeMaker.

I'd like to control where they're installed using environment variables like INSTALLSITEMAN1DIR* environment variables.

Where in the source tree should I place the man files, or what do I need to do to Makefile.PL to tell it about them?

Answer 1

What format are your manpages in? You shouldn't be shipping fully compiled manpages as each destination host will need to format them as needed with their own version of groff or troff or whatever.

If you write your manpages in POD format, MakeMaker will pick them and put them in the correct place automatically.

1. Just name the files with .pod on the end,
2. Put them in your lib directory, and
3. Format them in Perl's Plain Old Documentation (POD) format.

If you need to ship your manpages in some other format, I don't know what the protocol would be. You'll probably have to customize the Makefile that ExtUtils::MakeMaker generates. At that point, you might want to look into Module::Build, Module::Install, or Dist::Zilla as they are much easier to customize.