Contributing to the Linux man-pages project

The following notes are written for people who want to help with work on the Linux man-pages package.

To begin with, read man-pages(7) for information about conventions that should be used in man pages for the man-pages package. You might also find it useful to look at the notes on maintaining man-pages.

You can help in the following ways:

• Send in bug reports about problems in existing pages.
  
  
• Write patches that improve existing pages.
  
  
• Write new pages (take a look at the list of missing pages).
  
  
• Grep for the string "FIXME" in existing pages and write patches to fix the problems.
  
  
• If you notice that a new release of the Linux kernel or glibc adds a new interface or changes an existing interface, then report a bug to ensure that the change gets documented. (Interfaces include not just system calls and library functions but also /proc files, ioctl(2) operations, netlink operations, and so on.)
  
  
• Provide input on, or assistance with, the tasks listed on the TODO page.
  
  
• Ask the man-pages maintainer to add you to the (manually maintained) distribution list of people who receive notification of new man-pages releases, and review the changes that have occurred during a release (read the changelog and/or do a diff -ruN between the directory trees for the current and previous releases).
  
  
• Subscribe to the list linux-man-AT-vger.kernel.org and participate in the discussion of work on man-pages. To subscribe to this list, send a message to majordomo-AT-vger.kernel.org with the following body:

  subscribe linux-man

  Searchable archives of this list can be found on gmane and MARC.
  
  
• Review this website and suggest improvements to the design, formatting, and HTML usage. (Send mail to mtk.manpages-AT-gmail.com.)