Shouldn't 'man' depend on 'col'? Shouldn't 'col' be easier to find?

[Marco Atzeri]

On 08/07/2014 17:47, Jack Duthen wrote:
> Problem #1:
> ----------
> After I loaded a few cygwin packages, I got this:
>
> $ man bash | wc
> man: can't execute col: No such file or directory
>
> The "man" command works perfectly when the stdout is NOT redirected,
> but, when sent to a pipe or a file, the command "man" fails with the
> above message.
>
> Question #1:
> Shouldn't the 'man' function/package depend on the 'col' function/package?
>
> Problem #2
> ----------
> To solve my 'man' problem,I tried to find the 'col' command.
>
> I launched the standard interface (setup.exe) and entered 'col' in the
> 'Search' text field.
>
> It gave me a list of packages, mainly related to 'colamd', 'colorgc',
> 'protocol' stuff, 'colored' stuff, 'texlive-collection' stuff,
> 'colordiff'...
>
> but no clear link to the missing 'col.exe'.

wrong way. Setup search only package names, not their content

Best with
https://cygwin.com/packages/
https://cygwin.com/cgi-bin2/package-grep.cgi?grep=col.exe&arch=x86

also with
$ cygcheck -p col.exe
Found 4 matches for col.exe
netpbm-10.61.02-1 - Toolkit for manipulation of graphic images
netpbm-debuginfo-10.61.02-1 - Debug information for Toolkit for 
manipulation of graphic images
util-linux-2.21.2-1 - Random collection of Linux utilities
util-linux-debuginfo-2.21.2-1 - Debug information for Random collection 
of Linux utilities

of course "col" is too short to be meaningful, "col.exe"
is a better catch.

> Question #3
> To get a 'man' that works when piped, is there a better way than
> loading this "random" collection of utilities?
>
> Am I the only one to get that problem???

util-linux is a popular package, so the issue was not yet noticed.

man was recently changed, so this dependency was likely missed,
specially as it seems hidden inside the man binary.

> )jack(
Marco



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