An implementation of PostgreSQL full text search apply to linux man
The final result is a web page where you can type a request with a question or some keyword, then the website will return you the corresponding man command.
A basic exemple is : how to copy a file ? , then the website will return you the cp command and its description.
- PostgreSQL >= 8.3
- A PHP server
The installation is in three steps
The first step is to transform the man pages from their basic nroff format to a more human-readable version (.txt and .html) Standard location for man pages is /usr/share/man
You can find two script mit.sh and mih.sh who respectively convert man pages to .txt and .html files. You just have to place the scripts in the same folder as the man pages and run it.
- mit.sh use groff linux command
- mih.sh use roffit, a nice nroff convertor tool that you have to install before running the script
The folder results contains exemples of converted man files
The second step is to create a table containing the man pages in postgreSQL
To do this you have to create the table where we will index the man pages by connecting to your Postgres database and executing SQL script create_db.sql.
Then fill the file bdd.php with your connection to database informations, and run the script export_to_db.php to index man pages to the database.
The third step is to build an web page permitting to request the postgreSQL database.
Fill the file bdd.php with your connection to database informations, then drop bdd.php, css_file.css and index.php in your web php server.
Now you can use the man full text search web page !