Package: man-db Version: 2.13.1-1 Severity: normal Tags: upstream X-Debbugs-Cc: [email protected]
Dear Maintainer, man-db uses the `LANGUAGE` environment variable in addition to the locale to determine the man page search path. However, unlike gettext (which is probably the authoritative documentation for the `LANGUAGE` variable), it does not treat that variable as a search order / list of priorities and simply sorts candidates lexically instead. For example, if `LANGUAGE` is set to `fr:de`, it will show the German man page instead of the French one (assuming both exist): ``` # Expected result: /usr/share/man/fr/man1/dpkg-architecture.1.gz $ env -i LC_MESSAGES=en_US LANGUAGE=fr:de man -w dpkg-architecture /usr/share/man/de/man1/dpkg-architecture.1.gz # Matches expectations $ env -i LC_MESSAGES=en_US LANGUAGE=fr man -w dpkg-architecture /usr/share/man/fr/man1/dpkg-architecture.1.gz ``` Similarly, it seems to prefer the man pages matching `LC_MESSAGES` (including from the non-locale directories when using an `en_*` locale) even if it's not the first language in `LANGUAGE` (may be an unusual combination but should still work): ``` # Expected result: /usr/share/man/fr/man1/dpkg-architecture.1.gz $ env -i LC_MESSAGES=nl_NL LANGUAGE=fr:nl man -w dpkg-architecture /usr/share/man/nl/man1/dpkg-architecture.1.gz # Expected result: /usr/share/man/fr/man1/dpkg-architecture.1.gz $ env -i LC_MESSAGES=nl_NL LANGUAGE=fr man -w dpkg-architecture /usr/share/man/nl/man1/dpkg-architecture.1.gz # Expected result: /usr/share/man/nl/man1/dpkg-architecture.1.gz $ env -i LC_MESSAGES=fr_FR LANGUAGE=nl:fr man -w dpkg-architecture /usr/share/man/fr/man1/dpkg-architecture.1.gz # Expected result: /usr/share/man/nl/man1/dpkg-architecture.1.gz $ env -i LC_MESSAGES=en_US LANGUAGE=nl:en man -w dpkg-architecture /usr/share/man/man1/dpkg-architecture.1.gz ``` Not sure if this used to work (several Debian versions ago 😅) or if it just got more noticeable over time because more man pages have translations (installed by default) now. I've left out the `--debug` versions of the above invocations as they're rather verbose and are easy enough to reproduce on pretty much any Debian system that has the `dpkg-dev` package installed. Sascha -- System Information: Debian Release: 13.4 APT prefers stable-updates APT policy: (990, 'stable-updates'), (990, 'stable-security'), (990, 'stable'), (500, 'stable-security-debug'), (500, 'stable-debug'), (100, 'testing'), (1, 'experimental') Architecture: amd64 (x86_64) Foreign Architectures: armel, armhf, i386 Kernel: Linux 6.12.73+deb13-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU threads; PREEMPT) Kernel taint flags: TAINT_WARN Locale: LANG=en_GB, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=en_GB:en:en_US:C:de_DE:de Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system) LSM: AppArmor: enabled Versions of packages man-db depends on: ii bsdextrautils 2.41-5 ii bsdmainutils 12.1.8 ii debconf [debconf-2.0] 1.5.91 ii groff-base 1.23.0-9 ii libc6 2.41-12+deb13u2 ii libgdbm6t64 1.24-2 ii libpipeline1 1.5.8-1 ii libseccomp2 2.6.0-2 ii zlib1g 1:1.3.dfsg+really1.3.1-1+b1 man-db recommends no packages. Versions of packages man-db suggests: ii apparmor 4.1.0-1 ii chromium [www-browser] 147.0.7727.137-1~deb13u1 ii firefox-esr [www-browser] 140.10.1esr-1~deb13u1 pn groff <none> ii less 668-1 ii w3m [www-browser] 0.5.3+git20230121-2.1 -- debconf information excluded
