[OpenAFS-Doc] OpenAFS man page README
Russ Allbery
openafs-doc@openafs.org
Fri, 09 Dec 2005 15:29:22 -0800
OpenAFS Man Pages
Overview
This directory contains the POD source and (in releases) the generated
man pages for OpenAFS commands and files. The man pages are based on
the original IBM AFS Administration Reference manual, released with the
rest of AFS under the IBM Public License 1.0. They were converted from
HTML to POD, editing, and are currently maintained in POD.
The man pages are very much a work in progress. The original source
material dated from IBM's public release of AFS, and many changes since
made in OpenAFS are not reflected in the man pages. Help and
contributions are actively solicited. Please see "How You Can Help"
below for more information.
The long-term goal is for every command shipped with OpenAFS and every
configuration or data file written or read by OpenAFS to have its own
man page. Section one is used for commands that don't require special
privileges, section eight for commands for AFS administrators and local
system administrators, and section five for file formats and
configuration files, with the exception that command suites are kept
together (so, for instance, all fs commands are documented in section
one even though some of them are only usable by a local system
administrator).
The OpenAFS man pages are discussed on the openafs-doc mailing list at
openafs.org. If you plan on contributing to the man page project,
please join that mailing list and send suggestions, patches, and
contributions there. The coordinator of the OpenAFS man page project is
Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu>; feel free to contact me directly with
questions (although using the mailing list is generally better and will
probably result in a faster response).
POD and Man Page Generation
The OpenAFS man pages are maintained in POD (Plain Old Documentation),
the documentation system originally developed for Perl. This is not an
uncontroversial choice, since POD isn't as rich and full-featured as
other possible alternatives such as Docbook RefEntry. On the other
hand, POD is very close to plain text, can be easier to edit and
maintain for those not familiar with the documentation format, and has
more mature tools for conversion to formatted man pages, an output
format that is particularly important on Unix/Linux. There are many
good arguments either way, and fundamentally the decision was made to
use POD because I prefer it and I'm volunteering to write and edit the
pages and maintain them going forward.
To convert the POD source to formatted man pages, you need the pod2man
utility. This utility has come with Perl for many years, so if you have
Perl installed, you almost certainly have some version of it available.
For the best results, install Pod::Simple 3.03 or later and podlators
2.00 or later from CPAN and use that pod2man, but the results from the
pod2man that comes with Perl 5.8 or later will be very good. If you are
using earlier versions of Perl, the output should be adequate and
readable but may contain some formatting glitches.
Preformatted man pages will be included in distribution tarballs, but
those man pages may be generated with older versions of the conversion
utilities. To regenerate the man pages, run regen.sh at the top of the
OpenAFS source tree (this will also regenerate the Autoconf scripts).
Conversion to HTML can be done via any of the POD to HTML converters
available (there are many of them). Evaluation of the best tool to use
for OpenAFS and exactly how to do the conversion to get the highest
quality results is still underway; when complete, details will be
included here.
Formatting Standards
Each command or configuration file should have a separate man page in a
separate POD file. Command suites (fs, pts, vos, etc.) should have an
overview man page that lists the available subcommands by category,
documents common options, and discusses the general use of the suite.
Then, each operation code in the suite should have a separate man page,
named after the command with the space between the command suite and the
operation code replaced with an underscore.
All man pages must follow the standard layout for man page sections and
formatting. The best general reference is the pod2man man page,
although the sections used for OpenAFS man pages aren't quite the same
(see below). In particular, please use the following markup:
* B<> for all commands, command/operation code pairs, and options.
* F<> for file names, directory names, partition names, or paths.
* <I<>> for user-provided arguments (note the surrounding <>).
* I<> for terms being defined or titles of works.
* C<> for command examples, ACL characters, and example arguments.
Also see the afs(1) man page for general rules about how OpenAFS man
pages are formatted and for standard terminology to use when talking
about OpenAFS commands.
Each man page should have the following sections: NAME, SYNOPSIS (for
commands only), DESCRIPTION, CAUTIONS, OPTIONS (for commands only),
OUTPUT (where appropriate), EXAMPLES, PRIVILEGE REQUIRED (for commands
only), SEE ALSO, and COPYRIGHT, generally in that order. Be sure to
include the IBM copyright in all man pages derived from the original IBM
documentation. If you wrote the man page yourself, please include your
own copyright and a statement that the man page is released under the
IBM Public License Version 1.0, or under some other license that is
sufficiently compatible that we can use your work. If you use another
license and that license isn't "public domain," you have to give the
full license text in the man page; please don't use a license so long
that this is annoying.
The SYNOPSIS section should start with the full command name and the
full names of all options, and then have a second section showing the
most abbreviated form of the command name and its options. If the
command has aliases, it should have additional sections showing those.
Please be sure to follow all of the formatting requirements for
commands, flags, and options. Enclose optional arguments in [] and
choices in () separated by |. Command names and options are marked up
with B<> as mentioned above; all other literal text that should be
entered on the command line gets no markup.
References to other OpenAFS man pages should be given as L<afs(1)>.
Other man pages should be noted like df(1), without the L<> markup.
References to functions should be noted like function() with the
trailing parens. The POD converters know how to format these sorts of
references appropriately. References to other sections in the same page
should be given as L<SECTION>.
Command and output examples should be indented three spaces. Commands
entered by the user should be given on a line beginning with %. If the
command doesn't fit in 80 columns, put in a backslash at a logical break
point and continue the line with an additional four spaces of
indentation. Output examples may be wrapped with an additional four
spaces of indentation but probably shouldn't be; not wrapping makes the
man page look somewhat less readable, but is less confusing when
converted to other formats such as HTML.
POD does not allow markup in verbatim paragraphs (which are indicated by
indenting the first line of the paragraph), so metasyntactic variables
in examples should be shown like <this> with simple angle brackets
surrounding the variable. For consistency in formatting, references to
those variables should be formatted the same in following text.
How You Can Help
The OpenAFS man page project is just starting, and a lot of work remains
to be done. Any and all contributions are greatly appreciated. What
follows is a list of the ways that you can help in order of increasing
helpfulness. If you only have time to do something near the top of the
list, please do; every little bit helps. If you have more time and can
do something closer to the bottom of the list, that's even better and
your contribution can be included more rapidly.
* Point out places OpenAFS behavior has changed since the documentation
was written, or point out missing documentation. Please check the
"Known Problems" list below to make sure that the item is not already
noted.
* Point out formatting problems, typos, formatting inconsistency, and
other markup or language problems in the man pages.
* Provide missing documentation in some form (text, HTML, whatever)
that can be incorporated into the man pages, or detailed explanations
of how the existing documentation needs to be changed to match what
the tools actually do.
* Provide missing man pages in POD format suitable for immediate
inclusion in the documentation. Please try to follow the formatting
standards documented in the "Formatting Standards" section above, and
look at the existing man pages for examples.
* Provide patches against the POD source that correct formatting
problems, typos, formatting inconsistencies, or other markup or
language problems with the man pages.
* Provide patches against the POD source that add or correct the
documentation of commands or file formats for changes in OpenAFS.
Please send contributions either to the openafs-doc list or as bugs
filed via the bug reporting instructions at <http://www.openafs.org/>.
If you do submit a bug, please send me a note at rra@stanford.edu with
the bug number so that I'm aware of it, as I don't always notice new
bugs.
Known Problems
The current man pages have the following known deficiencies. Please
don't just report the deficiency again, but any contributions towards
fixing it are greatly appreciated.
* The section five and section eight man pages have not yet had an
initial editing pass and many of the section five man pages are
missing because the original reference page names didn't easily
convert to man page names. This is currently being fixed. Please do
not start working on the section five or section eight man pages yet
or bother reporting problems with them; they will be changing
significantly in the near future.
* The following commands have no man pages:
fs getcalleraccess
fs getcrypt
fs listaliases
fs newalias
fs rxstatpeer
fs rxstatproc
fs setcbaddr
fs setcrypt
pts interactive
pts quit
pts sleep
pts source
vos changeloc
vos clone
vos convertROtoRW
vos copy
vos shadow
vos size
* klog.krb, pagsh.krb, and tokens.krb need to be listed as alternative
names in the NAME line of the non-.krb man pages, links should be
installed on man page installation, and the behavior of pagsh.krb
should be documented in the pagsh man page.
* Some of the documentation in fs getserverprefs needs minor updates to
reflect what happens in the dynroot case.
* fs sysname documentation needs to include the possibility of setting
multiple sysnames and the resulting behavior.
If you notice other problems, please send them to the openafs-doc list
even if you don't have time to fix them. Someone else might, and we
want to track all of the issues.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>