Re: Bug#494287: man-db: Supplies invalid -wmac option to nroff when run with --warnings

[Colin Watson <cjwatson@debian.org>]

On Fri, Aug 08, 2008 at 07:03:59PM +1000, Peter Wright wrote:
> Package: man-db
> Version: 2.5.2-2
> Severity: normal
> 
> I noticed this problem when using lintian to test a custom package.
> 
> Running man with the --warnings option produces stderr as follows:
> 
>   $ man --warnings bash > /dev/null
>   /usr/bin/nroff: invalid option -wmac
>   $
> 
> It doesn't matter which manpage is used.

Already fixed in testing:

groff (1.18.1.1-15) unstable; urgency=low

  [ Forest Bond ]
  * debian/groff-base.mime: Use the utf8 device by default, as most modern
    systems use UTF-8 by default nowadays (LP: #174297).

  [ Colin Watson ]
  * Make nroff wrapper accept -w and -W options and pass them to groff to
    enable and disable warnings.

 -- Colin Watson <cjwatson@debian.org>  Thu, 06 Dec 2007 19:12:14 +0000

I don't really want to make man-db depend on this version of groff,
though, as man doesn't require it during normal operations. Could you
just upgrade groff? Perhaps lintian needs to check groff's version
number too?

-- 
Colin Watson                                       [cjwatson@debian.org]