How to get regular stuff working

2017-06-15T17:31:42Z

Stevel:

== Man pages ==

Not all man-pages are in Alpine, but this will get you most of the way there:

'''apk add man man-pages mdocml-apropos less less-doc'''
'''export PAGER=less'''

The above only provides ''core'' man pages. Other packages typically don't include their own man pages (nor other documentation). Rather, they provide an associated package that carries such stuff. For example:

$ '''apk add curl'''
$ '''man curl'''
man: No entry for curl in the manual.
$ '''apropos curl | wc -l'''
0 ''After adding curl, there are no man pages''
$ '''apk add curl-doc'''
(1/1) Installing curl-doc (7.52.1-r2)
Executing mdocml-apropos-1.13.3-r6.trigger
OK: 60 MiB in 31 packages
$ '''apropos curl | wc -l'''
366 ''Now, with curl-doc installed, there's a boatload of pages!''

'''NOTE:''' Not all packages separate out their documentation, but it is the ''Alpine Way'' (e.g. small footprint). Some packages don't provide any installable documentation at all, neither within themselves nor an associated doc packages. Further, appending "-doc" is merely a convention. In fact, the core man documentations are in man-pages (as in the ''apk add ...'' command, above). To find the right documentation package, try something like:

$ '''apk search gcc | grep ^gcc'''
gcc-objc-5.3.0-r0
gcc-gnat-5.3.0-r0
gcc-5.3.0-r0
gcc-java-5.3.0-r0
gcc-doc-5.3.0-r0 ''Here it is!''

'''FINALLY:''' If you're wondering why I've added ''less'' (and ''less-doc''), it's because ''man'' doesn't work correctly with ''more'' (the default pager). Don't fret too much about bloating up Alpine, though - adding man pages has a bigger footprint than less (''"less is more than man"???'')

== Operational hints ==

==== Shell @ commandline ====

Alpine comes with busybox by default, busybox is and endpoint for numerous symlinks for various utilities. Though busybox is not that bad the commands are impaired in functionality.

* funny characters at the console

Edit the file at {{Path|/etc/rc.conf}} and change line 92 to:
unicode="YES"

* Bash
It is easy enough to have bash installed but this does not mean the symlinks to busybox are gone

install bash like
apk add bash bash-doc bash-completion

* shell utils ( things like grep, awk, ls are all busybox symlinks )

apk add util-linux pciutils usbutils coreutils binutils findutils grep

==== Disk Management ====

Disk management is soo much easier with udisks or udisks2

Installation

apk add udisks2 udisks2-doc

See the mounted disks

udisksctl status

== Compiling : a few notes and a reminder ==

Compiling in Alpine may be more challenging because it uses [http://www.musl-libc.org/ musl-libc] instead of glibc. Please review [http://wiki.musl-libc.org/wiki/Functional_differences_from_glibc 'The functional differences with glibc' ] if you think of porting packages or just for the sake of knowing, of course.

Alpine offers the regular compiler stuff like gcc and cmake ... possible others

==== (unvalidated) apk packages to install so one can start building software ====
apk add build-base gcc abuild binutils binutils-doc gcc-doc

==== a complete install for cmake looks like ====

apk add cmake cmake-doc extra-cmake-modules extra-cmake-modules-doc

==== ccache is also available ====

apk add ccache ccache-doc

Alpine Linux - User contributions [en]

How to get regular stuff working